The History of Everyday Life

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THE HISTORY OF EVERYDAY LIFE

E D I T O R S

Sherry B. Ortner, Nicholas B. Dirks, Geoff Eley

A LIST OF TITLES IN THIS SERIES APPEARS AT THE BACK OF THE BOOK

PRINCETON STUDIES IN CULTURE / POWER / HISTORY

THE HISTORY OF EVERYDAY LIFE RECONSTRUCTING HISTORICAL EXPERIENCES AND WAYS OF LIFE

Edited by Alf Ludtke Translated by William Templer

PRINCETON UNIVERSITY PRESS PRINCETON, NEW JERSEY

ORIGINALLY PUBLISHED AS ALLTAGSGESCHICHTE: ZUR REKONSTRUKTION HISTORISCHER ERFAHRUNGEN UND LEBENSWEISEN COPYRIGHT  1989 CAMPUS VERLAG GmbH, FRANKFURT/MAIN ENGLISH TRANSLATION COPYRIGHT  1995 BY PRINCETON UNIVERSITY PRESS PUBLISHED BY PRINCETON UNIVERSITY PRESS, 41 WILLIAM STREET, PRINCETON, NEW JERSEY 08540 IN THE UNITED KINGDOM: PRINCETON UNIVERSITY PRESS, CHICHESTER, WEST SUSSEX ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOGING-IN-PUBLICATION DATA ALLTAGSGESCHICHTE. ENGLISH THE HISTORY OF EVERYDAY LIFE : RECONSTRUCTING HISTORICAL EXPERIENCES AND WAYS OF LIFE / EDITED BY ALF LÜDTKE ; TRANSLATED BY WILLIAM TEMPLER. P.

CM. — (PRINCETON STUDIES IN CULTURE/POWER/HISTORY) INCLUDES BIBLIOGRAPHICAL REFERENCES. ISBN 0-691-05693-5. — ISBN 0-691-00892-2 (PBK.)

1. HISTORIOGRAPHY. 2. HISTORY—METHODOLOGY. I. LÜDTKE, ALF, 1943–.

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D13.A53713

III. TITLE: EVERYDAY LIFE. IV. SERIES

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CONTENTS

FOREWORD vii Geoff Eley CHAPTER 1

Introduction: What Is the History of Everyday Life and Who Are Its Practitioners? 3 Alf Lüdtke CHAPTER 2

“Missionaries in the Rowboat”? Ethnological Ways of Knowing as a Challenge to Social History 41 Hans Medick CHAPTER 3

Mentalities, Ideologies, Discourses: On the “Third Level” as a Theme in Social-Historical Research 72 Peter Schöttler CHAPTER 4

Have We Come Any Closer to Alltag? Everyday Reality and Workers’ Lives as an Object of Historical Research in the German Democratic Republic 116 Harald Dehne CHAPTER 5

The History of Everyday Life and Gender Relations: On Historical and Historiographical Relationships 149 Dorothee Wierling CHAPTER 6

Popular Culture and Workers’ Culture as Symbolic Orders: Comments on the Debate about the History of Culture and Everyday Life 169 Wolfgang Kaschuba CHAPTER 7

What Happened to the “Fiery Red Glow”? Workers’ Experiences and German Fascism 198 Alf Lüdtke

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CHAPTER 8

Zeroing in on Change: In Search of Popular Experience in the Industrial Province in the German Democratic Republic 252 Lutz Niethammer GLOSSARY OF SELECTED TERMS AND ABBREVIATIONS 313 CONTRIBUTORS

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SIDE from the more recent growth of women’s history and gender history, Alltagsgeschichte (or the history of everyday life) has been the most important German historiographical development of the past two decades. Some of its main practitioners are quite well known in the English-speaking world—Alf Lüdtke and Hans Medick especially, and to a lesser extent Lutz Niethammer—but their special role in the Federal Republic as the advocates of a distinctive kind of history, now extending back some twenty years, is perhaps not as widely appreciated. In the English-speaking world, perceptions of the historiographical landscape in Germany (both before and after 1989) tend to be dominated by the leadership of the so-called Bielefeld school, a generational grouping whose unity and extent has sometimes been overdrawn, but who were broadly associated in the late 1960s and 1970s with the turning to U.S.influenced social-science history as the best means of modernizing West German historical studies.1 Alltagsgeschichte took shape in the mid-1970s as a kind of dissentient movement to the left of this newly consolidated social-science history, sharing many of the latter’s underlying commitments (for example, its principled call for coming to terms with the Nazi past, or its critique of the traditionalist methodologies and intellectual outlook of the established West German profession, often referred to pejoratively as the Zunft or the historians’ guild), but disliking its insistence on the primacy of structural analysis, or “big structures, large processes, huge comparisons,” to use one leading U.S. social-science historian’s summary of the creed.2 Just as the new social-science history gained momentum a number of programmatic publications appeared, mainly focusing on the social and cultural history of the later nineteenth- and early twentieth-century working class, but also extending back into the early modern period, from which alltagsgeschichte quickly acquired its name.3 Moreover, these emergent alternative perspectives were linked to a larger aspiration, to take history out of the university into the world of ordinary life. By the early 1980s, in fact, a veritable movement had developed, with its basis in many ways beyond the confines of the academy as such, in a wider domain of public history, reaching from museums, exhibitions, adult education, and the programs of local government cultural offices to the mass media, local publishing, and self-organized local research. Much of this grass roots activity became loosely grouped in the West German history workshop movement, whose emergence at the time of the peace move-

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ment and the launching of the Greens also lent this activity an unmistakable political edge, sharpened by the gravitation of interest toward the Third Reich. A high point in this process of diffusion came in 1980–81, when the competition for the President’s Prize for German History in Schools was devoted to the theme “Daily Life under National Socialism,” following earlier competitions on “Movements of Freedom” in one’s own locality (1974–76) and “The Social History of Everyday Life” (1977– 79).4 By the early 1980s a flourishing context of research and debate, both inside and outside the academy, had taken shape. What did the advocates of alltagsgeschichte want? What the early texts had in common was a shifting of the social-history agenda away from the prevailing ground of the social-science historians, but without returning it to the older institutionally or politically bounded forms of labor history, which had previously identified the history of the working class. The goal was to develop a more qualitative understanding of ordinary people’s lives, both by investigating the material circumstances of daily existence at work, at home, and at play (“the production and reproduction of immediate life,” in Friedrich Engels’s well-known phrase) and by entering the inner world of popular experience in the workplace, the family and household, the neighborhood, the school—in short, all those contexts normally assigned to the cultural domain. By exploring social history in its experiential or subjective dimensions, it was argued, conventional distinctions between the “public” and the “private” might also be transcended, and a more effective way of making the elusive connections between the political and cultural realms be found. Moreover, the new advocates argued, it was precisely these “insides” of the “structures, processes, and patterns” of social analysis—“the daily experiences of people in their concrete life situations, which also stamp their needs”—that had previously been left out.5 Alltagsgeschichte became the rubric ideally suited for bringing them in. There is a large amount to be said about the detailed intellectual context of these departures, much of it heavily shaped by the complex and distinctive formation of the West German New Left in the 1960s (as in the influence of Ernst Bloch, the ambivalent relationship to the Frankfurt School, and the general search for a theory of human needs). Pierre Bourdieu’s “theory of practical action” also had an important place, as did the impact of Edward Thompson and other British Marxist historians, and a broad indebtedness to Anglo-American anthropology. Among these influences, the turn to “ethnological ways of knowing” (to use the subtitle of Medick’s contribution to this volume) is perhaps the red thread. This was basically a response to the optimistic teleology of modernization and the “objectivist” concern with structures and processes of

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macrohistorical development that seemed to be so dominant in West German “historical social science.” On the one hand, the Alltagshistoriker regarded the claims of “progress” with a skeptical eye, and here the perspective of history from below—the interest “in historical ‘losers’ or in nonestablishment views of the processes of change”—found natural sustenance in much recent anthropology, which since the 1960s has been impressed as much by the costs as by the gains of the underdeveloped world’s encounter with the West.6 Shifting perspective onto the “internal costs” of social transformations in this way brings the casualties of progress more to the forefront of historical inquiry, as Edward Thompson and others in the Anglo-American discussion had so eloquently argued. On the other hand, the turn toward ethnology also involved a shift from impersonal social processes to the experiences of human actors. “If social science had traditionally assumed the existence of objective sets of relationships, the need now was to study the social and cultural world from the perspective of the women, men and children who composed it.”7 That is, the priority should be a social history of subjective meanings derived from highly concrete microhistorical settings. This was not to supplant but to specify and enrich the understanding of structural processes of social change. In fact, shifting the focus to everyday life would specifically transcend such a “sharp dichotomy opposing objective, material, structural, or institutional factors to subjective, cultural, symbolic, or emotional ones.”8 We can see these commitments powerfully at work in the writings of the editor of this volume, Alf Lüdtke, who has been a tireless exponent of the everyday life approach. For Lüdtke such an approach begins with the call for history from below, the fundamental orientation alltagsgeschichte shares with cognate tendencies in Anglo-American social history: “At the center . . . are the lives and sufferings of those who are frequently labeled, suggestively but imprecisely, as the ‘small people.’ It involves their work and nonwork. The picture includes housing and homelessness, clothing and nakedness; eating and hunger, love and hate. Beyond this, certain thematic emphases have emerged, such as the history of work, of gender relations, of the family, and especially of popular cultures. The attention is no longer focused on the deeds (and misdeeds) and pageantry of the great, the masters of church and state.”9 In the first instance, therefore, the history of everyday life involves the marking out of a particular empirical terrain. Second, there comes the stress on subjectivity and experience, on the social production and construction of meaning, theorized partly via the turn to ethnology/anthropology mentioned above, but also via forms of ethnographic analysis taken from ethnomethodology and symbolic interactionism in sociology. Third, Lüdtke insists on the need for “systematic

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decentralization of analysis and interpretation” through the careful construction of historical “miniatures.” It is by exploring forms of “microhistory” in this sense that we stand a greater hope of capturing more of the ambiguities and contradictions of ordinary people’s perceptions and behavior as they actually live their lives.10 Fourth, this implies no retreat into the particular, or to a narrow segment of social reality, but entails rather a different way of allowing the big questions of process and structure to be posed. In fact, alltagsgeschichte “cannot be isolated from the relations of production, appropriation, and exchange, and the related interest structures of society.”11 Nor, fifth, does it suggest leaving politics out of the analysis or neglecting the political dimension, because the same local or microhistorical contexts allow questions of both the public and the private, the personal and the political, to be searchingly posed. Finally, this agenda also has major political implications for the present, because for Lüdtke the effort at understanding the “Otherness” of popular culture in the past aims at recognizing much more fundamentally the contextuality of historical situations and actors than historicists are willing to accept. It is precisely this respect for the distance between “us” and “them” that prevents any facile process of identification. The emphasis on difference—via the multiplicity of forces, actors, and voices—simultaneously opens a new perspective on the potentials for historical change.12 During the 1980s, this agenda proved highly contentious to the established voices of the West German historical profession, including especially the high priests of social-science history, who saw the advancement of new forms of cultural history as a disastrous falling back from the standards of “scientific” research and discussion they had labored so hard to instate during the previous decades. Moreover, although slowly some acknowledgment of the new approaches has been achieved, there are still deep resistances in the mainstream of German historical studies, and the advocates of alltagsgeschichte have made remarkably few inroads into the institutional centers of the profession, in some cases enjoying far greater influence and recognition abroad than in Germany itself. Where social-science historians call for fresh attention to the importance of culture, they invariably stop the discussion just where Medick, Lüdtke, and their colleagues begin, cleaving to older types of cultural anthropology, rather than entering the current discourse of reflexive and postmodern anthropologies, Anglo-American cultural studies, literary theory, and the U.S.-based new cultural history, to which alltagsgeschichte bears such clear affinities. Alltagsgeschichte per se is often gratuitously slighted, and where the value of its contribution is mentioned, the presentation frequently disguises the history of extreme contentiousness involved, and the bitterly fought struggles that were necessary to gain legitimacy for the new ideas.13 In these respects, boundaries are still clearly being drawn.

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Nonetheless, the history of everyday life now has an impressive bibliography and scholarly achievement to its credit. A new journal has also been launched, Historische Anthropologie. Kultur, Gesellschaft, Alltag, which promises to rival Geschichte und Gesellschaft as the main source of radicalism and innovation. The various authors of this volume have built powerful national and international reputations for themselves, and continue pushing against the boundaries of given historical understanding. Their influence on younger German historians, at least in the Englishspeaking world, has become very great. Hans Medick is by any criterion one of Germany’s outstanding early modern historians; Peter Schöttler is one of the very few major voices mediating between the French and German historical and intellectual worlds; Harald Dehne opens a valuable window onto the former East German historical scene; Dorothee Wierling has pioneered the relationship of alltagsgeschichte and gender history; Wolfgang Kaschuba is a leading voice of the German discipline of Volkskunde, working at the interface of ethnology, history, and cultural studies; and in their different ways Alf Lüdtke and Lutz Niethammer have been transforming the existing protocols of discussion first of the Third Reich and now most recently of the former GDR.14 This collection of programmatic essays now provides excellent and much-needed access for a general English-speaking readership to this important body of work. Geoff Eley University of Michigan

Notes 1. This intellectual history cannot be presented in detail here. The main members of this grouping—men such as Hans-Ulrich Wehler, Jürgen Kocka, and Heinrich August Winkler, and in somewhat different ways Wolfgang J. Mommsen and Hans Mommsen—have an established presence in the North American academic world. They are frequent visitors to its conferences and research institutes, and their works are reasonably available in translation. Their flagship journal, Geschichte und Gesellschaft, subtitled Journal for Historical Social Science, launched in 1976, has become the premier historical journal of the Germanspeaking world. Good introductions may be found in the following: Georg Iggers, “Introduction,” in The Social History of Politics: Critical Perspectives in West German Historical Writing since 1945, ed. Georg Iggers (Leamington Spa, 1985), 1–48; Hans-Ulrich Wehler, “Historiography in Germany Today,” Observations on “The Spiritual Situation of the Age,” ed. Jürgen Habermas (Cambridge, Mass., 1984), 221–59; Geoff Eley, “Introduction,” in From Unification to Nazism: Reinterpreting the German Past (London, 1986), 1–20. 2. Charles Tilly, Big Structures, Large Processes, Huge Comparisons (New York, 1984).

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3. To my mind, these were the pioneering interventions: Hans Medick, “The Proto-Industrial Family Economy: The Structural Function of Household and Family during the Transition from Peasant Society to Industrial Capitalism,” Social History 1 (1976): 291–315; Lutz Niethammer and Franz-Josef Brüggemeier, “Wie wohnten Arbeiter im Kaiserreich?” Archiv für Sozialgeschichte 16 (1976): 61–134; Sozialwissenschaftliche Informationen für Unterricht und Studium (hereafter SOWI): “Bedürfnisse, Erfahrung und Verhalten,” 6 (1977): 147–96, esp. Alf Lüdtke’s guide to reading, “Fundstellen zur historischen Rekonstruktion des ‘Alltagslebens,’ ” 188–89; Jürgen Reulecke and Wolfhard Weber, eds., Fabrik—Familie—Feierabend: Beiträge zur Sozialgeschichte des Alltags im Industriezeitalter (Wuppertal, 1978). 4. One important trace of this activity is the successful film Das schreckliche Mädchen (abysmally translated as The Nasty Girl), a fictionalized account of one particularly explosive local research project, namely that of Anna Rosmus, a native of the Bavarian provincial town of Passau: in 1980/81 she studied the Nazification of her hometown on the level of the everyday. 5. Alf Lüdtke, “Zur Einleitung,” SOWI 6 (1977): 147. 6. Hans Medick and David Sabean, “Introduction,” in Interest and Emotion: Essays on the Study of Family and Kinship, ed. Medick and Sabean (Cambridge, 1984), 1. 7. Ibid., 41. 8. Ibid., 2. I have provided a more detailed account of this recent intellectual history in Geoff Eley, “Labor History, Social History, Alltagsgeschichte: Experience, Culture, and the Politics of the Everyday—a New Direction for German Social History?” Journal of Modern History 61 (June 1989): 297–343, where extensive bibliographical citations may be found. 9. Alf Lüdtke, “ ‘Alltagsgeschichte’: Verführung oder Chance? Zur Erforschung der Praxis historischer Subjekte,” unpublished paper, 1. 10. Ibid., 10, 12. 11. Lüdtke, “Zur Einleitung,” p. 147. 12. Again, I have provided full references and a more extensive discussion of Lüdtke’s work in “Labor History, Social History, Alltagsgeschichte,” 318ff. 13. See for instance the editor’s introduction to Winfried Schulze, ed., Sozialgeschichte, Alltagsgeschichte, Mikro-Historie. Eine Diskussion (Göttingen, 1994), 6–18, which flattens the debates surrounding alltagsgeschichte in the earlier 1980s into a single alphabetized footnote, thereby obscuring both the pioneering contribution of Medick and Lüdtke and the extremism of their opponents. 14. For Niethammer, see especially Lutz Niethammer and Alexander von Plato, eds., Lebensgeschichte und Sozialkultur im Ruhrgebiet 1930–1960, 2d ed., 3 vols. (Bonn, 1986), and Niethammer, Die volkseigene Erfahrung. Eine Archäologie des Lebens in der Industrieprovinz der DDR (Berlin, 1991); and for Lüdtke, see his “ ‘Ehre der Arbeit’: Industriearbeiter und Macht der Symbole. Zur Reichweite symbolischer Orientierungen im Nationalsozialismus,” in his Eigensinn. Fabrikalltag, Arbeitererfahrungen und Politik vom Kaiserreich bis in den Faschismus (Hamburg, 1993), 283–350; Lüdtke, “ ‘Helden der Arbeit’—Mühen

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beim Arbeiten. Zur missmutigen Loyalität von Industriearbeitern in der DDR,” in Sozialgeschichte der DDR, ed. Harmut Kaelble, Jürgen Kocka, and Harmut Zwahr (Stuttgart, 1994), 188–213; Lüdtke, “Polymorphous Synchrony: German Industrial Workers and the Politics of Everyday Life,” International Review of Social History, supplement, 38 (1993): 39–84.

THE HISTORY OF EVERYDAY LIFE

1 INTRODUCTION WHAT IS THE HISTORY OF EVERYDAY LIFE AND WHO ARE ITS PRACTITIONERS?

Alf Lüdtke

W

HAT Alltagsgeschichte—the history of everyday life—is and the uses it serves remains a matter of spirited debate, not just among historians. But the controversy itself has evidently helped to spark further interest in the field. Recent years have witnessed a flood of new articles, books, glossy coffee-table volumes, films, and television series all dealing with “historical everyday life”—publications and productions that have found a welcome market, and often stirred considerable attention. It is not just the topic that is controversial—even the term Alltagsgeschichte has been subject to criticism, and the label is indeed something of a less-than-ideal solution, employed for want of a better name. Nonetheless, the designation retains its utility as a brief and succinct formulation, targeted polemically against a tradition of historiography that has largely excluded “everyday life” from its purview. In sketching its essential contours, we are immediately struck by a characteristic feature of much research and most presentations that deal with the history of everyday life: they center on the actions and sufferings of those who are frequently labeled “everyday, ordinary people” (kleine Leute), a term as suggestive as it is imprecise. What is foregrounded is their world of work and nonwork. Descriptions detail housing and homelessness, clothing and nakedness, eating habits and hunger, people’s loves and hates, their quarrels and cooperation, memories, anxieties, hopes for the future. In doing the history of everyday life, attention is focused not just on the deeds (and misdeeds) and pageantry of the great, the masters of church and state. Rather, central to the thrust of everyday

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historical analysis is the life and survival of those who have remained largely anonymous in history—the “nameless” multitudes in their workaday trials and tribulations, their occasional outbursts or dépenses (Georges Bataille). In studies on the everyday toil and festive joys of men and women, the young and the old, individuals emerge as actors on the social stage. But this historiographic perspective also sharpens our sights for history’s victims and the multiple contours of their suffering. One representative example is the case of the brutal torture and murder of tens of thousands of women, as well as many men and children, that accompanied the waves of witch-hunting hysteria which swept across the early modern era.1 That topic has become a major subject for research and representation, extending far beyond the narrow confines of the immediate professional discipline. In particular, feminists regard the memory of historical oppression as an indispensable ingredient in a process leading to a better understanding of how one’s own individual identity has been shaped and constructed. But in Germany, it is studies of Alltag in the Nazi period that have had truly reverberating implications—both for public debate and private discourse on one’s own history. These investigations attempt to give (back) a human face to the victims of German fascism—the hounded, exploited, and murdered millions.2 For example, only the painstaking reconstruction of the “ordinary, run-of-the-mill” brand of contempt for the foreign forced laborers employed in such massive numbers in the Nazi war effort beginning in 1941–42 was able to shed crucial light on attitudes toward them: the way in which, at the grass roots, local level, feelings of national and “folk-racial” resentment commingled with an amalgam of fears and a sense of subservience conditioned and inculcated by one’s biography— at least among the great majority of Reichsdeutsche. Inquiry into the history of everyday life points up the extent to which most “average people” actually clung to the Nazi regime in their concern to survive. In the end, it was the “others” who bore the “costs” of that process—especially those whose exclusion seemed so “businesslike” in its methodical application: fellow human beings labeled as “subhuman creatures,” “elements alien to the folk community” (Gemeinschaftsfremde), and “foreign workers” (Fremdarbeiter). Thus, research into everyday historical realities has also explored the “inner perspective” of the acquisition and exercise of power by the Nazi rulers. In the light of such inquiry, the gaping distance between rulers and ruled is reduced—a presumed gulf that has so often appeared to exonerate the majority of their guilt. A window is opened on that “shared . . . experience” (Raul Hilberg) that animated bureaucrats and others actively to contribute their skills to mass murder. Those who supposedly were only cogs in the machine, carrying out orders, became active accomplices.3

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Insights such as these can no longer be ignored in the continuing controversy about the true contours of German history. This became amply evident in the much-discussed “historians’ debate” of the mid-1980s. Referring to the experiences of those who had been directly affected by events, Andreas Hillgruber, for example, argued that historians should “identify with the concrete fate of the German people in the East” and the “desperate efforts” of the German armies in 1944–45, which “took such a heavy toll.”4 Findings from research into everyday life on the countless atrocities committed or defended by German functionaries, civil servants, police, and the military at the concrete, local level after 1933 or 1939 have become central in refuting such theses. These studies on “fascism’s everyday face” have underscored the extent to which suffering among Germans toward the end of the war was associated in consciousness with the concatenation of terror and suffering caused by Germans themselves—and highlighted the fact that many Germans at the time also realized this connection. That is a key point in the historiography of everyday life: actions and experience cannot be separated from the context of their genesis and impact. Investigations of the ways in which “most people” managed somehow to “get by” during the era of German fascism have been explosive in their impact, especially because they have tended to reveal the degree to which the preponderant majority of Nazi Volksgenossen were in fact themselves perpetrators or accomplices. Such research, of course, does not address itself solely to those who were contemporaries of these events. We younger generations can no longer feel safe simply by girding ourselves with theories and analytical concepts. Evidently, it is not enough simply to determine what the “situation and circumstances” were back then, and explore whether these have changed. It is obvious that the historical actors were (and are) more than mere blind puppets or helpless victims.

The “Repetitive” Character of Everyday Life— or Forms of (Re)appropriation? Several key conceptual orientations and emphases of alltagsgeschichte should be specified more precisely.5 Two principal foci can be distinguished. The first stresses everyday activities in which an element of “repetitiveness” predominates.6 This perspective, as elaborated by Peter Borscheid, asserts that via repetition, “everyday thinking and action become pragmatic,” because routines function to “relieve” the individual of constant uncertainty or doubts. For social groups and institutions, routinization means “submission to authority” as a precondition of their “stability.” This orientation, which takes its conceptual cues from the social

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thought of Arnold Gehlen, reflects the continuity of that older conceptualization of social history viewed as “structural history,” where stress was placed on the “structure” of social forms and configurations.7 In keeping with such a static conception, its more recent variant, associated with the history of everyday life, presupposes a clear-cut separation between the spheres of everyday life and the noneveryday. At the same time, an explicit hierarchy is assumed: everyday life is the preschool, as it were, for the sphere of noneveryday eventfulness. But its crowning conception centers on the mechanisms of historical change: this view posits that nothing but a “select few personalities” are granted the privilege to “cross over” into the realm of the noneveryday. Yet these select few are the only ones “able to bring about further development in the quotidian basis . . . of everyday life.” Such development necessitates action by persons “outside of the sphere of Alltag.” A second set of approaches, in themselves rather diverse, nonetheless represent a fundamentally different perspective. Certain shared orientations emerge, and these are also the crux of the essays gathered together in the present volume. In contrast with the nondynamic concept just sketched, the reference point is not static structure, what remains “eternally the same.” On the contrary: the dynamism and contradictory character of radical historical change are linked with the “production and reproduction of real life” (F. Engels).8 In this view, reconstructions in the history of everyday life involve more than situations recurrent in the daily struggle for survival (and momentary experiencing of workaday events). Rather, such reconstructions reveal in particular the way in which participants were—or could become—simultaneously both objects of history and its subjects. From the perspective of the direction in social history known in Germany as “historical social science” (historische Sozialwissenschaft), the expansion of market relations, the implementation of wage labor and the increased division of labor, bureaucratization and “modern” forms of the central state, as well as the transition to what A. E. Imhof has termed a “lifetime in safety and security”—these constitute the central historical processes over recent centuries.9 By contrast, alltagsgeschichte—conceived as the history of everyday behavior and experience—does not try to raise fundamental secular change to a level detached from human agents, occurring behind their backs, as it were. Rather, historical change and continuity are understood as the outcome of action by concrete groups and individuals. Human social practice is shifted into the foreground of historical inquiry.10 Scrutiny is not focused on what Engels called the “average axis”11 around which interests rotate. Instead, the multifaceted ways in which individuals and groups make known (or conceal), implement (or block)

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their considerations of cost and utility are foregrounded. The thrust here is to demonstrate how social impositions or stimuli are perceived and processed as interests and needs, anxieties and hopes; indeed, how they are generated in the very process. To phrase it differently: the focus is on the forms in which people have “appropriated”12—while simultaneously transforming—“their” world. From this vantage, conditions for action appear ambivalent in their complexity: though given, they are in equal measure a product. These conditions change and acquire nuance within such “reappropriations.” Hence, historical subjects are not detached from the social “field-offorce” (E. P. Thompson).13 Initially, what this implies is that they cannot be considered “autonomous” personalities. It is not a question of “ego strength” as a counterpole, pitted against social conditions for expression. Individuals and groups do not construct the profile of the modes in which they perceive and act in some sphere removed and beyond the web of social relations—no, such a profile is generated in and through that very web.14 Acts in which people distance themselves from social rules utilize (or refer) to socially understood languages, discourses and codes: the matrix of resistance also marks a social relation. Of course, that relation is created anew by the subjects in concrete situations, and in a manner specific for them.

Decentering and “Otherness” Doing alltagsgeschichte involves more than striking out on a new approach to historical research and representation. This work is part of a more inclusive effort, namely, the attempt to forge a fundamentally new perspective on the way historians see the “achievements” of the modern era. It is no longer merely a matter of broadening customary concepts by including calculations on the so-called costs of secular modernization since the sixteenth century. Instead, inquiry privileges crucial questions about the motivating factors underlying that complex of historical shifts and transformations subsumed under the term “modernism.” Doubts now abound about any theses which posit “rationalization” as some sort of ineluctable process—one which supposedly provides the motive force for promoting the process of secular “emancipation” from uncomprehended (or “mythical”) forces. Concepts linking “rationalization” with the progress of humankind have also lost much of their persuasiveness. There is another side, methodological and theoretical, to the coin of these doubts: does the image of the “grand contours” of historical life actually accord with the concrete experience of “the many”? It becomes necessary

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to historicize the very assumption of the “shaping power of supraindividual forces,” that is, “societal structures and processes.”15 Are they not themselves the product of a society and culture that are decidedly “bourgeois” in character—a society in which a ruling elite, as disciplined as it was domineering, sought, through its explorers and entrepreneurs, to measure the rest of the world by its imperial yardstick? The concept of “peoples devoid of history” (E. Wolf) that has gained a niche in thinking within the European metropolitan “centers” does not only refer to the colonized nations. In these centers, the strange and alien element of “one’s own Otherness” remains hidden and uncharted territory as well: the history of the dependent and dominated, largely mute to date, still beckons to be disclosed. What is at issue is the “other half” of a process encompassing all of society: the history of how the expansion of commodity production, the state, and bureaucracy was experienced by “the many.” How was the uneven development of the forces of production, a process inseparable from the development of the forces of destruction, implemented in concrete terms? And in what way did these cataclysmic changes prove useful (or become at the very least tolerable) for the “masses” in the metropolitan centers? Such a shift in perspective necessitates a double effort. It is imperative not only to describe historical processes but to explain them—though without succumbing to the temptations of an objectivizing view. Historians who prepare their specimen objects using categories providing the greatest selectivity proceed based on a principle akin to Bentham’s allseeing “panopticon”: pervasive and encompassing insight, but only from one’s own elevated top-down vantage point. Paradoxically, the further this view extends, the more it precludes any chance of being able to visualize how things look when seen from the bottom up. Criticism of well-worn, fixed forms of scientific objectivizing does not substitute some mode of rapturous emotive comprehension or indiscriminate all-inclusive understanding in their stead. Rather, it is crucial to recognize that the distance between “us” and the “others” is not something self-evident and given, but problematical; it may be possible to bridge the gulf, but it cannot be eliminated (see the essay by Hans Medick in this volume).16 Above all else, this means that we must constantly strive to comprehend our own ideas about those “others”—peasants in the seventeenth century, workers in the nineteenth century, the educated middle class, civil servants—for what they really are: reconstructions after the fact. It becomes evident that these concepts, even when rendered more and more sophisticated (but not “sharper”!), remain nonetheless constructions; they are provisional and fragile. A glance at one’s own first fumbling attempts at understanding may be

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instructive: there is no way that unsuitable or shattered concepts can be quickly replaced or mended. Moreover, ambivalences cannot be resolved; instead, they have to be reckoned as fundamental to historical praxis and processes. Doing science can trigger the anxiety mechanism when confronted by such situations without the armor of concepts or theories. However, that very anxiety may generate one of those psychological selfblocks that tend to impede a productive approach to multiple meanings and fuzziness. To be sure, such shackled vision has a long tradition. After all, isn’t one of the abiding illusions of a naive “enlightened” optimism (in both its non-Marxist and Marxist variants) that the negation of existing circumstances is always pregnant with something “better” to replace them? At this juncture, a stocktaking by the profession is urgently required, namely, the historical self-enlightenment of the seemingly ahistorical social sciences, insight into their historicity.

The History of Everyday Life: A New “Irrationalism”? Attempts to decenter entrenched ways of seeing in historiography are manifest principally in the field of alltagsgeschichte. Approaches differ, but at least in the perception of the critics, they are often regarded as forms of that “new irrationalism” alluded to in numerous quarters. Thus, for example, Jürgen Kocka, in a paper before the Frankfurt conference on “The Future of the Enlightenment,” did not limit his examples of this brand of “irrationalism” to historians such as Ernst Nolte or Andreas Hillgruber, who reinterpret and downplay the excesses of German fascism in a way that is methodologically grotesque and politically cynical.17 Kocka cast his net wider, seeing the “history workshops” and “several other variants” of the historiography of everyday life as foci of attitudes and scholarly practice that are fundamentally unscientific—and thus hostile to Enlightenment values.18 Kocka gave an elaborate explanation to underpin his position. In his view, history as a science is based on the conception of what is essentially a unified history, over and beyond the mass of myriad individual (hi)stories. He contends that this concept of a connection between causes, actions, and effects is what allows us to grasp both the difference and the interconnection between past, present, and future; it thus contradicts any notion that “history repeats itself”—and is also, one might add, opposed to mythical notions of the universe and human fate. Kocka notes that a decisive element in “dealing scientifically with history” is the fact that there has been an established standard of “rigorous methods” and “argumentative” (i.e., not just narrative) presentation since the late eighteenth

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century. If one adheres to these standards, the resultant mode of scientific “discourse” can shield itself from the inroads of “legend and myth, distortion and falsehoods.” There is always an element of political judgment in any charge that the history of everyday life does not take the rules of critical scholarship seriously enough, or indeed completely ignores such rules. Thus, Hans-Ulrich Wehler, one of the founders of “historical social science,” has characterized alltagsgeschichte as a kind of “bland, conventional oatmeal” dished up as historical science. Despite that purported blandness, he nonetheless believes it contains the germs of what is patently an extremely dangerous attitude, namely, “cheap defeatist sentiment” vis-à-vis “the achievements, as yet by no means outmoded, of our own culture area.”19 In German trade union circles as well, there was considerable skepticism when it came to attempts by practitioners of alltagsgeschichte to calculate the human costs of industrialism and bureaucratized policy. Moreover, in a number of leftist salons, the charge of cultivating an uncritical affection for all the “nameless millions” (including perhaps even those many “little Eichmanns”?) was linked with the more straitlaced scholarly suspicion that conceptions of social theory were being cast indiscriminately to the winds. The history of everyday life was, they contended, nothing but sentimental celebration of those “ordinary, everyday people,” eternally one and the same. In the “historians’ debate” of 1986–87, critics opposed to the revisionistic “new trend” (Wende) in history à la Nolte were not only concerned with forestalling what they felt was an illegitimate “exoneration” (Entschuldung) of Germans as a nation. At the same time, they sketched out the proper direction future criticism should take: Kocka argued that the conditions which gave rise to the possibility of fascism could be explained only if “large-scale contours, big patterns” on the level of macrotheory and macroconcepts were investigated, such as “industrialization and capitalism . . . nation and revolution.”20 Once again, this approach implies that there can be only one interpretation of rationality. It also claims the ability to treat the most disparate historical modes of life as similar, and to systematize them—nothing and no one is “alien” to its omnivorous scope and grasp. Moving along a parallel track, Jürgen Habermas espoused the thesis that criticism of the assorted concoctions brewed by the Wende in historiography—namely, the various efforts to generate national-conservative “meaning and value,” to use Michael Stürmer’s parlance—was possible only from a position of “close ties with the West” and “constitutional patriotism.”21 In Habermas’s view, there had presumably been a dominant unchallenged consensus in Germany up until the “new trend,” a consensus that could be interpreted as an answer to

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Auschwitz: “the abstract idea of the generalization of democracy and human rights.” But isn’t the positing of such a broad society-wide consensus in the Federal Republic in effect exclusionary? Doesn’t it lock out those on the left who have struggled in the conviction that it is imperative to actually risk creating “more democracy” in concrete terms, often outside the bounds of the established parties (and established bureaucracies)?22 A second misgiving should be added—if there was in fact some sort of consensus in Germany arching across camps, classes, and milieus, its focus lay elsewhere: it was centered on suppressing (or completely ignoring) awareness of the complicity by millions in the deeds of the Nazi regime. Of course, the criticisms of alltagsgeschichte outlined here are peculiarly purblind in their bias. The critics have not really paid serious attention to either the programmatic texts or the relevant studies, monographs, and other activities—apparently it is easier to remain faithful to well-worn, entrenched clichés. Perhaps for that very reason, such critics have been able to produce a powerful, self-generated momentum. There is, of course, a cogent explanation for the displeasure felt by many scholars critical of alltagsgeschichte. The investigation of experiential contexts and daily praxis forges a link between the dominant model of “Western” rationality and the reality of the lives of “the many.” For the guild of scholarly mandarins, this turn of the analytical screw is evidently as unexpected and uncomfortable as it is for the guardians of “leftist” theory. Moreover, the custodians of both bourgeois and proletarian liberation movements also feel threatened. This can be instructively illustrated by examining the example of the labor movement. Inquiry into the history of everyday life sheds new light on modes of behavior bound up with differing sets of experiences. The “inner” side of class-internal distinctions is laid bare: “respectable” versus “unpolished, rural versus urban workers (as well as female workers and working-class families). But this approach also helps illuminate forms of self-organization patterned largely in terms of differences in mode of life (Lebensweise—see the Glossary)—that is, along the fracture lines of cultural demarcation within the class. The limits of the possibilities for being organized “from the outside” are thus revealed. Yet such a perspective reveals more than just accomplishments; shortcomings and deficiencies, like those of the “free” (and Christian) trade unions and workers’ parties in imperial Germany, and even more so during the Weimar Republic, are also highlighted. This, in turn, guides us to questions about whether members and representatives have an “ability to learn” (from the past): since the great respect for rationalization in the plant and “German quality work,” emphasized by German Labor Feder-

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ation unions in the 1920s, could easily be harnessed by the Nazi authorities in their wars against “non-German” peoples, the question is whether this attitude toward work is indeed still valid in the Federal Republic today. It is evident that the debate about the use and abuse of alltagsgeschichte does not follow the lines of previous customary categories. Distinctions between a critical “historical social science” on the one hand, and a Verstehen-oriented history of great events on the other have as little validity as those between Marxist and non-Marxist historians. It is useful in this context to cast one’s sights beyond the (national) borders. In the debate being waged in British scholarship, one can find that there are both opponents and proponents of a “history of the everyday life”23 among so-called Anglo-Marxists, who for decades have been grappling with the question of human agency and action. Developments in response to Jürgen Kuczynski’s (East Berlin) Geschichte des Alltags des deutschen Volkes are also interesting and important.24 His six-volume work has sparked considerable controversy in the GDR (see the essay in this volume by Harald Dehne). Quite obviously, a large number of “general historians” are still convinced that historians of everyday life are interested only in colorful supplements, anecdotal materials—the tinsel and trivia of the historical process. There is an ironic parallel here to the basic tenor of the critique reiterated in varying forms by H.-U. Wehler since 1979. Wehler contends that alltagsgeschichte (apart from the already mentioned snack of “intellectual oatmeal”) provides at best little more than addenda to the history of “great” events, that is, questions of “population, family, the history of towns and education, women and sports.”25

The Appeal of Accurate Observation: “Romanticizing” or Thematic Detachment (Verfremdung)? Many critics agree: alltagsgeschichte romanticizes the past. The attempt to present the suffering and toil of everyday life—as well as its joys, great and small—ultimately leads, it is claimed, to a depiction of picturesque detail.26 The upshot is a series of quick trips to exotic terrain, rather than insight into possibly “other” and unfamiliar types of experience. Though this critique overshoots its mark, it does point up some genuine failings. It is indeed correct that the assumption of one and the same monolithic unaltering relation of “dependency” among the “great masses” of simple people rides roughshod over the peculiarities of their modes of life, and especially disregards the dimension of historical change. At the same time, this perspective from the outside tends to

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overlook Otherness in one’s own terrain. It loses sight of the distances separating various modes of life, even when these are chronologically simultaneous. If these peculiarities (or elements of Otherness) are to be grasped in their full scope and power, then it is necessary to undertake historical “voyages of discovery into one’s own people” (F. J. Brüggemeier). Only by using methods and insights similar to those of anthropology can we track down and isolate those abilities and practices that enabled dependent groups to call attention to and implement their own concerns and interests, their Eigenes. However, this reference to ethnographic methods should not be misinterpreted: it is not a recipe. Field research and “participant observation,” the royal path of empirical social research and cultural anthropology, cannot be easily imported into historical research.27 While anthropological field-workers, in the very matrix of their daily lives, must learn to cope with an entirely “other” and different society, expecting at the very least protest or outcry from their human objects of study, historians can usually look forward to the undisturbed peace and quiet of their desks. Except for the direct witnesses (Zeitzeugen) of most recent history, the objects they attempt to “get closer to” (Annäherung—see the Glossary) are unable to contradict them or engage in violent protest. For the ethnographic field-worker, the radical break with his or her previous living habits, aptly described by the image of “social death” (M. Erdheim), represents an extremely threatening yet unavoidable step. In this regard, historians can feel safe and secure: while bringing to light what may be very “other” motives and practices, such as those of workers in the last century—thus demonstrating the systematic effort to “come nearer” to their research objects—they nonetheless also remain safely detached in their daily life as researchers. Alltagsgeschichte deals for the most part with people who have left behind few if any source materials in the usual sense. It is rare to find letters or other documents written by the individuals themselves (or consciously passed on, handed down to others). In probing the most recent historical period, direct participants (Zeitzeugen) can be interviewed. In such cases, historians then generate their own source materials.28 As a general rule, however, one should keep in mind the following proviso: the joys and sufferings, longings and worries of earlier generations have often left little more than a smudged imprint on the material sources that remain, or are encoded there in a cryptic form. A first approach (and often the only option unless dealing with the history of the most recent past) is to reevaluate those testimonies that have already been interpreted elsewhere from another perspective. Much diverse and instructive material is contained in reports by police and factory inspectors, teachers, or church

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ministers; one can also tap letters, (travel) notes, or visual testimony given by distant or only temporarily “participant” observers. When ministers or teachers express their outrage at the presumed immorality of those in their charge, noting precise details, we can proceed by discounting their indignation. What such documents reveal is not only furtive, timid behavior but permissive, often even quite wild and raucous interpersonal interaction in the workplace and elsewhere, such as in relations between the sexes in textile plants. Methodological procedures designed to aid in the reconstruction of both everyday lives and modes of life are part of what is termed microhistory. The spectrum includes case studies, that is, investigations of individual biographies, or, more often, individual local contexts (villages, city neighborhoods). Long-term continuities and changes over two or three centuries are likewise a legitimate topic for alltagsgeschichte. Social biographies, so-called “prosopographies of the masses,”29 should be investigated using specific appropriate methods. In any event, it is important to bear in mind that the remains of dwellings, transportation links, implements and instruments, or consciously preserved or later discovered written and pictorial texts (the latter often ignored!) such as tax rosters or industrial photos do not automatically disclose the traces of historical praxis. The effort to decode their message has to grapple with a multitude of details and individual facets. Yet it is a fruitless and antiquarian enterprise if not coupled with a reconstructive linking together of the individual elements in a network of interrelations. Reconstruction does not mean that some long-standing hidden structure of historical “courses of events” is waiting to be uncovered and brought to light. The Bourdieuian concept of “habitus” may, for example, reflect just such a misunderstanding. It refers to a “structurating structure,”30 and at the same time to the “system . . . of unconscious schemata for thought, perception and action.”31 Initially, the reconstructors find themselves immersed in a confusing context or “net”; only as a result of their groping and probing does it take on a more solid form. Each of the “nodes” in this “network” appears as the concurrence of a multitude of individual linkages. Continuing with the same image, these linkages are not stable over time, nor do they have the same intensity; rather, they are dependent on the specific force field and the actions of the actors. At times, they are defectively fragile or even completely lacking. “Discontinuities” and “gaps” are elements in the network. To phrase it differently: what is important are the mediations—as well as the ruptures, discontinuities—between the thought-images, modes of interpretation, and rules for action which can be considered valid in a given context.32 “Careful observation” is advantageous but does not “reach” any historical reality “outside” of modes of interpreting, perception, and orientation. This represents a central focus of studies in alltagsgeschichte. In

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keeping with that centrality, three of the essays in the present volume concentrate on questions associated with these modes. In his paper, Hans Medick discusses anthropologically oriented criticism of traditional hermeneutics. To reflect on what is “other” requires a new basis underpinning the question of the specific logic of social practice. At the same time, by carefully tracking the trail of anthropological experience and method, opportunities present themselves for developing suitable perspectives for historical inquiry. In his discussion of the “third level,” Peter Schöttler examines three concepts or perspectives that have been introduced (or resisted) in very different ways by scholars in the Federal Republic. In a careful assessment of “mentality,” “ideology,” and “discourse,” he zeroes in on approaches which attempt to accomplish a double objective, namely, to grasp the cultural field (of perceptions and interpretations) both as material production and as a socially produced matrix of “interpretations.” His special concern is to suggest alternatives to reversion back to “the” supposed historical subjects—interpretive moves often based on faulty reasoning. The historiography of everyday life wishes to illuminate the forms of mediation—and the discrepancies—between orientational patterns (“mode of life”) and the forms of daily behavior and experiencing (“everyday life”). A stricter separation of the structure Lebensweise from its subjective experience “in everyday life” should sharpen one’s sights for “historical forms of individuality.” In this way, research on alltagsgeschichte can be included more consistently in the debate on the forms and driving forces underlying large-scale fundamental societal change and upheaval. Such a thesis is espoused by Harald Dehne in his essay.

“Uneven” Changes and “Patchwork” Composites: Abandoning the Idea of “Big Structures, Large Processes”? The history of everyday life concentrates on small units. However, doesn’t that imply being restricted to a specific point in time, a “here and now”? In the eyes of its critics, what is characteristic of alltagsgeschichte in its own everyday practice is a “renunciation, often virtually programmatic, when it comes to trying to comprehend the contextual interconnections.” The “big issues” are ignored, such as the question of “how states and classes are formed.” The historiography of everyday life, in this view, is quite incapable of arriving at any “knowledge of how things interconnect.”33 Associated with this is the charge that the approach is undertheorized—or even has an animosity toward theory. Undoubtedly, the history of everyday life demands the systematic decentering of analysis and interpretation. One can also discern the begin-

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nings here of a new outlook on theory. The classification of individual phenomena and their systematization no longer occupy center stage.34 At issue now is a reorientation in which theory deals with more than just the level of “conception” (Begriff): it encompasses the very act of “conceptualizing, idea formation” (Vorstellen) as well. Theory aims at making data comprehensible but includes the act of “conceptualizing” (or “imagining”) the synchronism of individual elements or developments, even if they should prove to be contradictory, or perhaps unrelated. Attention directed to the “uneven” (unegal) change (K. Marx35) in forms of production or modes of interpretation reveals that opportunities for action by historical subjects were jumbled together in a kind of “patchwork” (Gemengelage) with the limitations on such action. Thus, this view allows for reckoning the synchronisms of different if not contradictory moments which may coexist without necessarily being mediated or directly linked to each other. By referring to this “uneven” factor, and to the multiple ambivalences of social practice, inquiry can disclose and pinpoint the specific “patchwork” of impositions and incentives, symbols and interests. It becomes possible to reconstruct forms of (re)appropriation by historical subjects without the necessity of having to assume any sequential hierarchy of “conditioning factors” or “conditioned factors.” An important deduction from this is that interests and “objective” constraints are not anterior to practice, but an integral part of it. They are perceived both by individuals and groups—via the agency of interpretations. The repertory of these interpretations also bears traces of “interests”; overall, it preserves the multiplicity of individual and collective experience. The symbols and images that transport and present such interpretations are deposited in these experiences. In (re)appropriating the “world” and “society,” these meanings are brought to bear, that is, varied, but they are also expressly reconfirmed or altered. Only gradually can one discern the emergent contours of a new syntax serviceable for more suitable theoretical generalizations. The conception of theory in which “the general” derives from an image of “the same” is evidently not easily discarded. But scrutiny trained on individual “configurations” (S. Rokkan) of constraints and possibilities, interpretations and behavior modes facilitates comparisons of a new type—made on the basis of working “from the bottom up.” The call to “dig where you’re standing!” was necessary but is not sufficient. With these words, Sven Lindquist36 intended to direct the attention of workers—or those who could not believe they were capable of having actually made their own history—to the terrain of this specific context. What the situation requires is greater depth and breadth: to delve deeper while extending one’s own diggings horizontally, thus also broadening the horizon.

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However, work in the history of everyday life all too often gets snagged here in its own cables and hawsers. The available suggested paths for comprehending or conceptualizing the historical process as a totality tend to vitiate the very point of alltagsgeschichte. Concepts that follow the lights of “capitalization” (in the sense of the Marxian critique of political economy) or “rationalization” (in the sense of Weber’s “disenchantment” of the world) do not attain the necessary degree of multilayeredness requisite here. The Habermasian thesis of the “colonization of the life world” is more subtle but also neglects the fundamental ambivalences of historical social praxis.37 The specific horizons of “life world” are not simply dissolved as a result of “colonization” by functional “imperatives” of the total societal system. Instead, there is a “mediatization of the life world in and with the structures of the life world.” The “reproductional constraints” of the total societal “system” and the “purposive activities” associated with this conception “hide themselves, as it were, in the pores of communicative action.”38 The relatively permanent complaisance (Hinnahme) on the part of the disadvantaged and dominated in accepting the unequal distribution of resources and goods can certainly be accounted for utilizing such a construction. Yet a teleological trap lies in wait: the fact that the “system” and structure of domination remain intact must be viewed as proof for a successful mediatization. That perspective, however, excludes the question of whether those mediatized do not indeed develop “styles”39 of behavior which establish and screen off spheres of their own—unobtrusively perhaps, yet with great effectiveness. Of course, it is true that questions about “styles” assume that opportunities for action are not reducible to a zero-sum game. Rather, this perspective views system boundaries as flexible—that is, as the product of a rich and varied social practice. Let us look at this idea in concrete terms: the propertyless classes always laid claim to (or practiced) their own forms of living within the shell of the same forms in which, since the late nineteenth century, they had been appropriating various “colonizing” inroads into their lives (ranging from “education” to “hygiene”). They certainly did not exclude the option of capitalizing on the “progressive” aspects of new impositions or offerings. Knowledge about the nutritional value of specific foods or of hygiene in the care of infants40 opened up new possibilities for satisfying and enhancing their own needs. The factories and labor courts (beginning in the 1820s) and the administrative courts (after 1875) facilitated attempts to take the “modern constitutional state” (Rechtsstaat) at its professed word. Despite the fact that governmental social insurance programs functioned largely (and by design) as the “carrot” accompanying

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the stick of police repression,41 they provided the chance to raise a legal claim to benefits from employers, insurance offices, and welfare services. Such benefits, albeit meager, helped to diminish the daily risks (in the struggle for survival).42 Ways of seeing in alltagsgeschichte are not characterized by analytical separation, but rather by the concrete linking of “conditions” and “interpretations,” that is, of “class” and “culture.” In contrast, it has been the practice in “historical social science” to place emphasis on three analytically “equal dimensions—economy, authority and culture.”43 They are viewed as being essentially interwoven, yet are given differential weighting. At least in this regard, there are signs of a welcome new orientation within the framework of the project “Burghers, Bourgeois Culture, and Society”: stress is not placed on class positions, legal conditions, and political affiliations, but rather on a specific configuration of “norms, attitudes, and modes of life.” These factors are postulated as forming the basis for “cohesion among burghers and their distinction from others.”44 Just how concrete situations can be brought into association with the “grand lines” of historical development remains a thorny problem. To my mind, to talk about the (total) contexture falsely suggests that the power of objects and circumstances is what has always been decisive, in a seemingly natural and organic way. “Mediation” in most instances would then signify nothing more than a correspondence, silently effective and long-standing, between differing or contradictory elements. Yet another side of the coin remains: it is undoubtedly possible to spread out and order the array of “larger-scale” contextures, pinpointing individual actors, their interests and interpretations. Nonetheless, it is not always possibly to discern clearly the traces of their incursions, impositions, and incentives in the actions and experiences of those affected. Still, there should be no cause for resignation. Reconstructions in the realm of alltagsgeschichte are not limited to small worlds that have been hermetically sealed off. The possibility exists to pull oneself up out of the mud by one’s own analytical bootstraps. The various forms of “thick description” and analysis allow us to broaden our perspective. Thus, toil at a lathe or loom in Germany cannot be separated from the conditions and experience of those who create the prerequisites for that labor or utilize its products. To put it more concretely: a coffee break in a factory or in the relaxing comfort of a café always contains a referential component: it is inseparable from the conditions of production and experience of the coffee planters in Columbia or East Africa. In other words: experiences emerge, but these are never in isolation. The pleasures and privations of others are enfolded (aufgehoben) in the striations of their formation. Human experience gathers together “experiences that are singled out by attention.”45 They refer to the profile of one’s own needs and those of

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others—a profile shaped at the same time by these experiences. To this extent, specific modes of experiencing can be distinguished for groups sharing the attribute of gender or common workplace, household, or neighborhood. The forms in which needs are expressed and (perhaps) satisfied are defined in respect to and by looking at concrete publics. Of course, among the dominated, these are largely privatized arenas of (self-)representation. For example, the effort to shield oneself from attempts by the authorities or superiors to control workers also figured as a determinant factor within the organized labor movement. Yet it was not only overt expressions which “played upon” the forms of communication that were current (or at least intelligible) in the various reference groups. Even communicative silences and the often richly nuanced forms of complaisance, distancing, and willful Eigen-Sinn (see the Glossary) never reflected needs that were merely individual. It is always a question of the organization of social relations—a matter of politics (see also my contribution in the present volume). In view of the attention given to the limits and options for action of the “nameless,” it is not surprising that orientations in alltagsgeschichte, in the perspective represented here, are shaped (or at least animated) by two questions: that of class and, increasingly, the dimension of gender relations. Four essays in the present volume reflect very different approaches to these questions. They also probe what insights can be gained for an enhanced understanding of “politics” and human action. In previous inquiry, studies on the history of labor and wage laborers enjoyed a special importance within research on experience and social practice. Labor in this context is not conceptualized simply as an “economic” relation, based on the calculation of one’s own interests. Rather, proletarian modes of life (and survival) link sociocultural conditions (“identity via work”) and biographical profiles. They “discard” any unilinear conception of class situation (see the contribution by Wolfgang Kaschuba as well as my own essay). The “question of gender” was initially focused on the “lives of women.” One consequence was a perspective in which household and family were no longer viewed as a homogeneous unit. It became evident that in modern societies, women who work in the home experience a highly contradictory “wedging together” of (domestic) labor, love, and oppression. Only gradually is it now becoming clear that relations between the sexes are not limited either to a single gender or to individual segments of daily practice. The chapter by Dorothee Wierling deals with both the interlocks and differences between the analysis of experience and the investigation of gender-specific structures. Lutz Niethammer concentrates on the degree to which experiences must always be conceived in the respective plural—despite all

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(pre)formations—and the way they pull together individual and general history as “nodes” of private recollection, thus also facilitating a new understanding of “politics.” Niethammer presents the initial findings from a project on life histories conducted in the German Democratic Republic. “Experience types” are probed; the spectrum of political views becomes visible in a generation charged with the task after 1945 of building the GDR.

Contexts and Miniatures Approaches in the historiography of everyday life demand that researchers address themselves to contexts. To that extent, delimiting the scope locally and regionally is indispensable. With good reason, inquiry has focused on individual agricultural or home-industrial villages,46 regional trade areas, or workers’ neighborhoods.47 Studies explore genderspecific experiences in individual branches of trade or industry, in families and neighborhoods, during social intercourse, and in organizational interaction.48 Yet to illuminate conditions “on the spot” means that the purview must be extended beyond the compass of “ordinary, everyday people.” The influence, status, power, and privilege of the elites—the große Leute—cannot be excluded. Titles of ownership and power, and in particular their symbolic representations, prove themselves to be the “coinage” of the realm in social relations and conflicts. The microscopic investigation of living conditions in the countryside has shown in what way inheritance law and the division of inherited property or primogeniture have differentially shaped demographic developments, family relations, and kinship groups.49 In industrial cities, the set of police regulations and codes of industrial plant rules substantiate the existence of extensive programs to control and discipline the working population, while throwing light on profiles of recurrent and constant obstreperousness by workers.50 Moreover, institutions of law (enforcement) manifest themselves as being relatively changeable, despite their inertia. At the same time, one can note the dual function inherent in forms of law: legal rules and regulations not only mark out the limits of action—they also represent possibilities for action open to individuals whose status and “rights” have been classified by many in a given society as “inferior.” Hence, contextualization does not mean limiting one’s attention only to the shrill or muted expressions of the Betroffenen, those affected (and afflicted). Rather, what is required is an exact, more “profound” and probing look at social situations and relations, as well as their intertwinings and rhythms of change. Only in this way is there any chance of recog-

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nizing lines of discontinuity and fissure between and within classes and social strata. To put this more concretely: one cannot grasp the dynamism inherent in the formation of “village women’s sisterhoods” (Dorffrauen) and “boys’ lodges” (Knabenschaften) in villages in the princely bishopric of Basle in the early eighteenth century, for example, without including the privileges of the “village burghers” as part of the overall picture.51 Transposed into more general terms: because conflicts over aspects of class and power are synchronous with gender-related polarization as well as generational conflict, the social field to be explored is always multilayered. Increased attention among historians to individual situations—and the ambivalences and multiple meanings in those situations—has its implications for the nature of representation. If ambivalences can be laid bare only by linking together a multitude of individual observations, or drawing on disparate sources and historical residua, then it is imperative to examine individual cases and their history. They provide far more than just local color, highlighting history as a process, as a plaiting of strands, a mosaic of (inter)actions. The “density” of life situations and contexts of action can be made vivid and palpable in the form of the miniature.52 At the same time, refractions, secondary tones and undertones, hidden motifs, and results can also be probed. Moreover, the authors of miniatures demonstratively renounce any claim that they are trying to deal exhaustively with the multilayered structure of historical processes. Collages or mosaics can help make individual layers or nodes within societal “patchwork” structures three-dimensional and plastic.53 One can glimpse the relief contours of those coded or (initially) “invisible structures” (Ginzburg/Poni) that become perceptible in human praxis. They refract, as it were, in the miniatures and depicted episodes—without being totally exhausted by these.54 Miniatures thus productively reflect that it is impossible to piece together in quick fashion some sort of “histoire totale.”

Pioneer Studies—Stimuli from “Outside” Here in Germany, historians have tended to be hesitant about concentrating on the reciprocal relations between “objective” life situations and “subjective” perception and action as a key question of historical research. In this regard, work by English, French, American, and Italian historians has proved especially stimulating, and a number of these monographs have already appeared in German translation. A decisive impetus for all inquiry into the history of “the many” was provided by the thesis that rebellious “mobs” do not act irrationally but

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consistently follow the lights of their own rationality, honed by experience. E. P. Thompson has developed this perspective using the example of the logic or “moral economy” of plebeian crowds in English towns during the eighteenth century, with notable results.55 Such investigations of frequently suppressed or excluded “logics” reveal the potential inherent in group-specific orientations.56 What must be decoded are the recurrent visual or gesture-based “languages” in which oppressed or marginalized groups and individuals have expressed and represented themselves. This has become especially evident in the descriptions of the carnival spectacles in France during the early modern period.57 Natalie Z. Davis has shown how practices developed in the speeches and festivities of the topsy-turvy “reversed world” which “splashed over the rim,” as it were, of the limited specific situation. There is no question that the inequalities between classes, sexes, and generations were suspended only momentarily in the rituals of “reversal,” and were not permanently abolished or revolutionized. Yet when women, the young, and the elderly “occupied” autonomous time and space for themselves, a matrix was created: experiences crystallized that shook to the very foundations the matter-of-fact “naturalness” with which social hierarchies were otherwise accepted. This perspective also affords a new angle on overly simplistic categorizations or distinctions. In some cases, rulers were themselves dependent to a significant degree on those they ruled over, and people who resisted did not by any means oppose only those directly “in power.” Thus, for example, the violence of rioting urban masses in sixteenth-century France was directed against the authorities. But the roll call of victims was not limited to the rich; the Protestant and Catholic mobs frequently struck out at simple priests or pastors, and particularly at artisans—menu peuple from modest circumstances like the rioters themselves. Studies on the role and influence of women in patriarchal societies have also sparked a rethinking of traditional “grand concepts.” Ambivalences emerge behind what were apparently smooth, seamless dependencies. Thus, we now know that village life was largely regulated by the fund of expertise which women controlled (such as knowledge concerning kinship relations or magical practices). Examples range from prerevolutionary France to contemporary Berber villages in Morocco.58 Yet a book by Carlo Ginzburg has caused a sensation far beyond the boundaries of the professional guild of historians. He is not interested in sketching a mere panorama of dispositions and mentalities. Rather, Ginzburg explores their thrust and impact within the conflict between “dominant culture” and the “culture of the lower classes” in a specific situation. Ironically, the historical records of the ruling elite made it possible here to create an especially brilliant paradigm of historical enlightenment. Using

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the meticulous records of the Counter-Reformational Inquisition, Ginzburg reconstructs the various facets of the view of God and the world among the “dominated,” rigorously limiting his attention to one person and case: a miller named Menocchio living in Friaul in the sixteenth century.59 The study’s title, The Cheese and the Worms, underscores the way in which Menocchio clothed his criticism of the church in a cloak of metaphors that was as graphic as it was blasphemously subversive.

Passive Concern or “Active Involvement” Analysis of historical everyday events and situations travels a path that penetrates into countless historical lives. It provides multifacted insights into the modes of life of classes and groups. The unavoidably detailed steps and stages such research entails require a major expenditure of time—so what is the main motivation behind all this gargantuan effort? The activity of the “history workshop” (Geschichtswerkstatt) movement in Germany as well as the various national conferences of professionals and lay historians in the “history festivals” (held since 1984) and their “market of possibilities” have served to highlight—better than many of the nicely formulated, programmatic declarations and prefaces—just how most practitioners view their principal priorities. Their prime objective is to awaken a feeling of Betroffenheit, personal emotional concern.60 But what precisely does that signify? To some, the associated call to give practical application to that “sense of concern” as it pertains to the affliction and oppression in past times and other places would seem either too vague or overly naive. Moreover, isn’t that call itself attenuated by verbal inflation, undercut in effect by the often excessive verbiage about “those who were actually affected,” the Betroffenen? Such an orientation has a double meaning for historical interest in the narrower sense: first, it signals the express interest in individual, historically concrete human beings, their biographies and experiences. Secondly, it constitutes an attempt—utilizing a historical example—to show the alternatives, not (yet) discredited, to the oppression experienced in one’s own everyday life. This also holds true for a good deal of the new interest, much in evidence in Germany over the past decade, in the everyday world of workers, especially their informal forms of interaction. Yet what is the justification for such questions and claims? To some, the insistence on Betroffenheit—where the observer (and not the “other”) is the one betroffen, the one on stage—suggests a lack of confidence in one’s own yardsticks. Doesn’t it reflect an obstinate deflection of attention from incomprehensible, “different,” or “other” conditions of life, albeit unintended? This approach may also act to foreclose feedback, nip-

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ping in the bud any follow-up questions that might be addressed to the researchers. Self-critical reflection may be impeded by Betroffenheit, obviated in a gesture of moral self-assurance. Remarks by the writer Christa Wolf open up another perspective. In her novel Kindheitsmuster (Patterns of Childhood), she has sketched the entanglements of individual experience with the conditions prevailing under German fascism.61 The novel is set in the 1930s and involves her own experiences with the Nazis as well as those of her parents; it also deals at the same time with experiences she, the daughter of a small shopkeeper, had with her parents and family. The novel’s theme revolves around the tactics of accommodation and the forms of getting by, surviving. Referring to this reconstruction, Wolf has called elsewhere for the need to understand the special quality of such a work of literature.62 She notes that it tapped both personal and collective memory, but its intention was not to awaken Betroffenheit. Rather, Wolf counseled, what was needed was “active identification and involvement” (Anteilnehmen) in your own life as well as that of others. This active concern is not aimed by a writer primarily at the others—they are not targeted. Whoever engages in such an act of identification does not wish to change other individuals, but instead tries to understand them—and him/herself as well. Christa Wolf has stressed that without such Anteilnahme, “no memory, no literature” is possible. And one could add: there would not only be no history in the sense of historiography—there would likewise be no history as an attempt to prevent history from “recurring.” Questions about the conditions, consequences, and limits of Anteilnahme could help to throw needed light on another, little-examined dimension of dealing with the Betroffenen in history, those directly affected. Should one cultivate an indiscriminate respect for all the “nameless” multitudes in the past? Some—perhaps even a great many—of those who were “directly affected” turn out to be individuals who in fact did not suffer, were not dominated, not exploited. In particular, a difficult question has to be addressed: what is the significance of the recognition that “the many” during German fascism were at the same time perpetrators, accomplices, and victims? And what about those who served in concentration camp guard units, or were members of SS-Einsatzgruppen— how should they be seen? The notion of an all-too-human “brother Eichmann” (as in the play by Heiner Kipphardt) cannot function to exonerate, releasing us from the need for critical distance vis-à-vis all the identifiable Eichmanns and their minions. This particular aspect of “communicative” historical research, of course, remains a blind spot in the work of many of its proponents. All too frequently, the act of taking historical subjects seriously is mistaken for boundless sympathy. There is a corresponding restriction of aperture,

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limiting attention to those who can be considered “pure” victims. It is little wonder then that critics feel their concerns are justified. Micrological analysis and “trying to get closer” (Annäherung) merely help to extend the self-interpretation of the Betroffenen themselves. Yet I would contend that just the opposite holds true. Only when a window is opened on the genesis of experiences that, for example, motivated “old party activists” to become involved in the Nazi movement in the first place can social conditions be revealed in their capacity as specific concrete possibilities for experiencing Nazism individually—meaning, in this case, embracing and advancing its cause. The active identificational involvement inherent in Anteilnahme entails recognition of the unique, special, and perhaps even “other, alien” elements—including what is horrifying—in the many life histories of “old party activists” and fellow travelers. It is also important to understand how murderous violence and state terror can become (or even remain) attractive options within a democratic industrial society. “Active involvement,” in contrast to the classic concept in historical hermeneutics, does not designate a fusion of “meaning horizons” (H. G. Gadamer). Any attempt at “coming nearer” to the realities always remains a kind of reconstruction.63 In particular, all efforts to probe the multiple interpretability of living conditions and life situations in minute detail deny any claim to presumed intimate familiarity. Anteilnehmen does not aim at a naive “nestling up” to the subject. Rather, what it facilitates is greater awareness of the shape of that distance separating “them” from “us.”

Actors on Historiography’s Stage: Guild Members, Filmmakers, History Workshops, “Barefoot Historians” When you reach a point where justifications and motivations are invoked, then it is high time to ask about the actors involved: who are the practitioners engaged in alltagsgeschichte? In recent years, a number of professional (social) historians have added perspectives from the history of everyday life to their repertory. In the field of contemporary history, the group associated with Lutz Niethammer and Alexander von Plato at the University of Hagen deserves special mention. Significant findings from their project “Life History and Social Culture in the Ruhr, 1930–1960,” have appeared in three volumes.64 The approaches of oral history mobilized there on a grand scale have become a kind of paradigm for numerous other projects, mainly in local history, some of them based outside the perimeter of professional research insti-

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tutes (see Lutz Niethammer’s contribution in this volume dealing with a recent attempt to gather and interpret memories in life history using interview techniques). To a substantial degree, alltagsgeschichte has also been advanced by people beyond the pale of the historians’ guild. Filmmakers have made substantial contributions—through their concrete films, and not by programmatic statements. Though perhaps without a mass impact, Eberhard Fechner’s work, such as his television film Das Leben der Klara Heydebreck (The Life of Klara Heydebreck, 1979), has enjoyed wide acclamation in the media. Utilizing the form of a collage of text and images, this film depicts the life (and silent suffering) of a war widow in Berlin. It also becomes clear how the reconstruction of the past gropes its way back, as it were, image by image from an accidentally preserved school photo. Peter Stripp’s 1983 television film Rote Erde (Red Earth) was also highly acclaimed. Harnessing a fictitious plot as armature, he presents a vivid picture of the fate of immigrants and their attempts to survive aboveground and below in a coal mine and company housing settlement in the Ruhr. Its background shots and scenes are based on research into the relevant domains of social history and alltagsgeschichte; the film provoked substantial positive response from both audiences and critics (and brisk sales of the book version).65 A year later, Edgar Reitz came out with his marathon sixteen-hour movie Heimat (Homeland)—an attempt at a visual village chronicle stretching from the 1920s to the 1960s. While Rote Erde employed the dramatic elements of natural events, mountain catastrophes, and conflict on the job and in marriage, Reitz experimented with another narrative stance. To a much greater degree, he highlighted undramatic situations, presenting ensembles radiating a certain atmosphere.66 The associated documentary perspectives do not communicate any idea or perception of the “discontinuities” in and from which people in the fictitious Hunsrück village of Schabbach experienced (i.e., complaisantly accepted and used) fascism—and also liked to imagine it was “over and done with.” In any event, the medium of film reaches a much wider, albeit far less clearly defined, audience than books—especially if such movies are aired on television. In the spring of 1985, the Third (Educational) Channel in the Federal Republic broadcast the nine-and-a-half-hour film Shoah by Claude Lanzmann.67 Working with lengthy scenes and takes, Lanzmann does not tell any stories; rather, he documents interviews, interrupted by quiet camera journeys over the tracks and terrain of the death camps as they appear to the eye “today.” In contrast to the above, obviously fictional attempts to “come closer” to and re-create historical modes of life, here there is no “staging” of genocide, memories, and silences. Lanzmann does not try to make the past a “living” present (Ver-

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gegenwärtigung). The presentation of the memories of perpetrators and Jewish survivors, as well as Polish contemporaries (and Polish cosurvivors), renders the machinery of annihilation visible, and attests to the salience of this approach beyond the specific historical moment. Take, for example, the sequence involving the memories of a former teacher’s wife whose husband was assigned in 1942 to the German school in Chelm. The wrinkling of her nose in recollected response to the interminable succession of trucks that “drove by so close” (i.e., the gassing vans)—and the “imposition” of the “screams” of the victims—has evidently remained a gesture of irritation unchanged over the decades. The sober tone of the visual and spoken record of recollection highlights the “banality” (H. Arendt) of the shoulder-shrugging condoning of the mass murder of millions, apparently then as now. It should give pause for thought that in contrast to the American soap opera Holocaust (1979), public response was far more subdued in this case. The rapid ebbing away of the initial shock wave that swept across Germany in 1979 during the first few weeks after Holocaust was broadcast also underscores another important insight: the intensity of measurable reaction is a highly questionable indicator of the quality of “mass” memory work. Alltagsgeschichte has become the common denominator for new forms of memory work in a local and regional framework. Alongside individual (youth) groups, some of which are associated with trade unions68 and political education projects,69 the “free initiative groups” of the history workshop movement70 have become increasingly active. They focus on research “on the spot,” probing the “tracks” left by the “nameless and anonymous,” especially the oppressed, ostracized, and excluded.71 Projects researching and presenting the lives, suffering, and resistance of workers, the death of Jewish prisoners, foreign workers, Gypsies, male and female homosexuals under German fascism have all become possible in recent years only as a result of the laborious, often conflict-ridden (spade)work of these grass roots groups. History workshop groups have also attempted to stimulate public discussion and political action: demands for renaming streets and schools, for memorial plaques, and for the construction or expansion of memorial sites are intended to make it more difficult to repress and forget, to sweep the past under the public carpet.72 Over the past several years, there has been vehement criticism by history workshops of plans for establishing a German historical museum in Berlin and a museum for the history of the Federal Republic in Bonn.73 It is not only a question of whether one or another aspect or emphasis relating, say, to minorities or women should be included. Rather, the fundamental misgivings about these projects are based on two theses. First, there are serious doubts about “nationalistic” dimensions involved: after

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all, “our” history has also been decisively influenced in a variety of ways for some time now by ongoing processes aimed at overcoming the nation(-state) and its appurtenances—from the utilization of colonial dependencies to the “modern” forms of the exploitation of the third and fourth world. Secondly, it is necessary to raise questions about the projected goal of pluralist diversity in the showcase presentation of Germany’s heritage: the fear is that such variety can function to further the illusion of “objectivity” all the more emphatically—yet without taking into due consideration the caesuras in the posited “continuity of consciousness.” Since the plan is to create exhibits that present a multitude of controversial positions concurrently, the criticism is that these synchronous positions short-circuit each other, so to speak. The upshot: “instead of calling history as an object into question, they lend it an aura of objectivity.” Seen from this perspective, critics argue, the whole project is nothing but a broadly based attempt to flee from that “collective amnesia” which has been the dominant mode of public memory for more than forty years. The demands raised are consistent in that they do not call for mere changes in the proposed concept. They want to encourage observers to look over and beneath the rim of previous “history on a grand scale”— what that requires in this case is abandonment of the plan for the “German historical museum.”74 Many of those active in the history workshops belong to a new generation of (local) historians. A large number were politically socialized starting in the mid-1970s. They found themselves growing up in a society in which impudent and imaginative wilfullness and the beginnings of a open, disputatious “political culture” had been subordinated to demands for material security and law and order. In the initiatives afoot outside the academic world, especially within the history workshops, there is an increasing sense that theory and methodological precision are absolutely essential.75 Even if there is still much room for improvement, there remain excellent reasons to be skeptical about any mere insistence on the traditional received canon of scientific standards.76 For many outsiders, based on their bitter experience, “scholarship” is in fact synonymous with the rat race for jobs and limited funding, coupled with the personal battle to establish and maintain a reputation—and this whole struggle for academic survival played out behind a constructed impression of busyness and untiring diligence. Shared expectations thus include efforts to create an alternative—in particular an open, even solidarity-based exchange of knowledge and insights. They are accompanied by an emphatic call: researchers must develop a new sense of responsibility toward the objects they scrutinize.

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For this reason, investigators are constantly trying to relativize their status as experts. Their text is not necessarily more suitable than the one formulated (or concealed!) by the “objects” of research themselves. In oral history projects, there is the possibility of feedback, channeling (intermediate) findings back to those investigated. Admittedly, it is difficult to determine whether this serves primarily to alleviate the problems researchers have when it comes to justifying their work—or if in fact it actually is of concrete assistance to the informants themselves. In any event, considerable effort is invested in finding and even reaching a potential audience outside the circumscribed perimeter of small academic circles. This seems to be most successful when media other than books are mobilized. In the context of exhibits, those investigated sometimes even advance to the status of experts and cocreators.77 It is obvious that such options presuppose the participation of living witnesses, Zeitzeugen. The situation is fluid when it comes to alltagsgeschichte and new forms of cooperative research. In the activities of the history workshops, it is becoming increasingly evident that the professional ferreting out of residues, traces, and sources and their preservation is quite compatible with the objective of overcoming the widespread sterility of established scholarly pursuits. Attempts at radical critique remain dependent on a fund of previous debates and a variety of materials necessitating interpretation; and such critical confrontation presupposes the verifiability of questions and findings. On the other hand, by going “barefoot,” one can stay closer to the soil and hard rock of reality—an insight often forgotten among “institutionalized” scholars and scientists. A good piece of advice for practitioners active outside the guild, of course, is not to get bogged down burrowing too deeply solely in local plots and “fields.” It is more and more obvious that the action and sufferings of “the many” should not be treated in isolation, but need to be transposed into the contexture of supraregional, national, and global reciprocal relations. Phrased differently: a crucial question is how to interrelate individual local studies—in what way, for example, can industrial work in Eßlingen be compared with that in Essen, St. Etienne, and Turin “from the bottom up”? Differing objectives, as well as language barriers, not only act as an impediment to exchange (and contestation) between the skeptical critics and proponents of the historiography of everyday life—to a large degree, they also characterize the situation among the researchers themselves. Nonetheless, one insight holds true for the writers of books and film scenarios, for team members active in youth education with a trade-union/ political orientation, and especially for the large and varied number of history workshops: in approaching alltagsgeschichte, it should not be for-

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gotten that the professional guild enjoys something less than monopoly control of the field. Perspectives in the history of everyday life arch beyond and cut across (and through) the lines of demarcation separating the established scholarly approaches and domains. The historiography of everyday life augments the opportunities for those previously submerged or suppressed to give their “own” history a voice and vehicle.

Notes 1. See P. Kriedte, “Die Hexen und ihre Ankläger. Zu den lokalen Voraussetzungen in der frühen Neuzeit. Ein Forschungsbericht,” Zeitschrift für Historische Forschung 14 (1987): 47–71. 2. See, for example, the supplementary volumes of Schülerwettbewerb Deutsche Geschichte um den Preis des Bundespräsidenten, 1980–81 and 1982– 83, especially D. Peukert and J. Reulecke, eds., Die Reihen fast geschlossen (Wuppertal, 1981); for 1982–83 (theme: “Eastern Workers” and “Foreign Workers”), see D. Galinski and W. Schmidt, eds., Die Kriegsjahre in Deutschland, 1939– 1945 (Hamburg, 1985). For some representative studies and reappraisals dealing with the topic “50 Years 1933–1983,” developed in particular by history workshops and a number of individual reseachers, see Solinger Geschichtswerkstatt, “Fremdarbeiter in Solingen, 1939–45” (Solingen, n.d. [1982], published manuscript); G. Hoch, Zwölf wiedergefundene Jahre: Kaltenkirchen unter dem Hakenkreuz (Bad Bremstedt, n.d. [ca. 1982–83]). On the oppression and murder of homosexuals, Sinti, and Roma (Gypsies), forced sterilizations, the persecution of prostitutes and the crippled, see Projektgruppe für die “vergessenen” Opfer des NS-Regimes in Hamburg, ed., Verachtet, verfolgt, vernichtet (Hamburg, 1986). Kindred earlier works written far afield from the “new movement in history” (Der Spiegel, June 6, 1983) include H. G. Adler, Theresienstadt 1941–45: Das Antlitz einer Zwangsgemeinschaft, 2d ed. (Tübingen, 1960); H. Langbein, Menschen in Auschwitz (Vienna, 1972); E. Klee, “Euthanasie” im NS-Staat (Frankfurt am Main, 1983). On the system of exploitation of foreign forced laborers, see U. Herbert, Fremdarbeiter (Berlin-Bonn, 1985), and U. Herbert, A History of Foreign Labor in Germany, 1880–1980: Seasonal Workers/Forced Laborers/Guest Workers (Ann Arbor, 1990), esp. 87–119, 127–92. Research projects at universities have made important contributions to the history of repression in local and regional everyday life (see the work under H. Obenaus at Hannover University and D. Krause-Vilmar at the University of Kassel). For an overview, see the review article by D.J.K. Peukert, “Das ‘Dritte Reich’ aus der ‘Alltags’-Perspektive,” Archiv für Sozialgeschichte 26 (1986): 533–56, and D. Schmidt and H. Gerstenberger, eds., Normalität oder Normalisierung? Geschichtswerkstätten und Faschismusanalyse (Münster, 1987). For a recent dissenting view critical of everyday-historical approaches to the Nazi period, see A. Rabinbach, “The Reader, the Popular Novel and the Imperative to Participate: Reflections on Public and Private Experience in the Third Reich,” History & Memory 3, no. 2 (1991): 5–45.

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3. R. Hilberg, The Destruction of the European Jews (New York, 1985), 993– 1029; see M. Broszat and S. Friedländer, “A Controversy about the Historicization of National Socialism,” Yad Vashem Studies 19 (1988): 1–47. On questions of memory work within and dealing with the Reich Security Main Office, the nerve center of Nazi terror, see R. Rürup, ed., Topographie des Terrors: Gestapo, SS und RSHA auf dem Prinz-Albrecht-Gelände (Berlin, 1987), and G. Aly, ed., Aktion T4 1939–45: Die Euthanasie-Zentrale in der Tiergartenstr. 4 (Berlin, 1987). 4. A. Hillgruber, Zweierlei Untergang: Die Zerschlagung des deutschen Reiches und der Untergang des europäischen Judentums (Berlin, 1986), 24f. Regarding the debate, see n. 17. 5. The discussion here is not intended to be complete. The multiplicity of conceptual approaches to what is “everyday life”—and especially their numerous shortcomings—have been trenchantly treated in N. Elias, “Zum Begriff des Alltags,” in Materialien zur Soziologie des Alltags, ed. K. Hammerich and M. Klein (Kölner Zeitschrift für Soziologie und Sozialpsychologie, Sonderheft 20) (Opladen, 1978), 22–29. 6. P. Borscheid, “Plädoyer für eine Geschichte des Alltäglichen,” in Ehe, Liebe, Tod: Zum Wandel der Familie, der Geschlechts- und Generationsbeziehungen in der Neuzeit, ed. P. Borscheid and H. J. Teuteberg (Münster, 1983), 1–14, esp. 8–10. This is the programmatic description to a series now (1992) encompassing ten volumes entitled Studien zur Geschichte des Alltags, concentrating mainly on the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. It contains a number of serviceable (i.e., “thickly descriptive”) social-historical studies whose depth and scope have not been restricted in any way by Borscheid’s programmatic sketch. 7. See the programmatic statement by W. Conze, Die Strukturgeschichte des technisch-industriellen Zeitalters (Cologne, 1957). 8. F. Engels to J. Bloch, September 21–22, 1890, in Marx-Engels-Werke (hereafter MEW), vol. 37 (Berlin [GDR], 1978), 463. 9. See the critical “historicizing” argument put forward by H.-U. Wehler, Modernisierungstheorie und Geschichte (Göttingen, 1975); also C. Tilly, Big Structures, Large Processes, Huge Comparisons (New York, 1984). For material studies centering more on an examination of changes in forms of rule and domination in global perspective than on aspects of “modernization,” see B. Moore, Jr., Social Origins of Dictatorship and Democracy: Lord and Peasant in the Making of the Modern World (Boston, 1966), and T. Skocpol, States and Social Revolutions (Cambridge, 1979). See likewise C. Bright and M. Geyer, “For a Unified History of the World in the Twentieth Century,” Radical History Review 39 (1987): 69–91. 10. See especially M. de Certeau, L’invention du quotidien, vol. 1, Arts de faire (Paris, 1980). In contrast, “social praxis” appears as the cipher of a complex and hermetic system of social relations (i.e., a system that has always determined the emotions of its actors) in P. Bourdieu, Entwurf einer Theorie der Praxis (Frankfurt am Main, 1976; originally published as Esquisse d’une Théorie de la Pratique [Geneva, 1972]); English translation: Outline of a Theory of Practice (Cambridge, 1977). Bourdieu’s concept of “habitus” (also see the Glossary in this

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volume) has shown itself to be quite useful in an effort to get beyond the distinctional confines of a crude either-or option, i.e., social determination or “autonomous” subjects. Despite the skepticism regarding the array of possibilities this approach opens up, a motivating impetus remains: the aim of achieving personal insight into the hidden limits of individual, “self-determined” behavior. See Bourdieu, Entwurf, 177ff., 357ff., and Bourdieu, Sozialer Sinn (Frankfurt am Main, 1987; originally published as Le sens pratique [Paris, 1980]), 97ff. 11. F. Engels to W. Borgius, January 25, 1894, in MEW, vol. 39 (Berlin [GDR], 1968), 207. 12. K. Marx, “Nationalökonomie und Philosophie,” in Marx, Die Frühschriften, ed. S. Landshut (Stuttgart, 1953), 240. Marx insists here that “appropriating” (Aneignen) does not signify a one-sided “enjoyment” or relation of mere “having”—it involves the manifold variety of the “sensual appropriation of the objective human being, of human works for and via the human person.” The “behavior” of the “organs of his individuality” and his “social organs” are the “appropriation of human reality” in their “behavior toward the object.” 13. E. P. Thompson, “Eighteenth-Century English Society: Class Struggle without Class?” Social History 3 (1978): 151: “societal ‘field-of-force’ ”—at least for the analysis of “gentry-plebs relations” in eighteenth-century England. 14. “Ego-achievements” appear as peculiarly unsocial in H.-P. Dreitzel, Die gesellschaftlichen Leiden und das Leiden an der Gesellschaft (Stuttgart, 1968), 199ff., 212ff. A stimulating approach can be found in L. Krappmann, Soziologische Dimensionen der Identität, 5th ed. (Stuttgart, 1978), 11f.; the individual is conceptualized here as a product of his “social biography.” 15. H.-U. Wehler, “Alltagsgeschichte—Königsweg zu neuen Ufern oder Irrgarten der Illusionen?” in Wehler, Aus der Geschichte lernen? (Munich, 1988), 142, 307–12; see Wehler, Deutsche Gesellschaftsgeschichte, vol. 1 (Munich 1987), 6–30. 16. See also my sketch, “ ‘Fahrt ins Dunkle’? Erfahrung des Fremden und historische Rekonstruktion,” in Geschichte—Nutzen oder Nachteil für das Leben? ed. U. Becher and K. Bergmann (Düsseldorf, 1986), 69–78. 17. See especially D. Diner, ed., Ist der Nationalsozialismus Geschichte? (Frankfurt am Main, 1987), and W. F. Haug, Vom hilflosen Antifaschismus zur Gnade der späten Geburt (Hamburg, 1987); see also C. Meier, Vierzig Jahre nach Auschwitz: Deutsche Geschichtserinnerung heute (Munich, 1987); R. Augstein, “Historikerstreit”: die Dokumentation der Kontroverse um die Einzigartigkeit der nationalsozialistischen Judenvernichtung (Munich and Vienna, 1987); J. Habermas, “Eine Art Schadensabwicklung,” in Habermas, Eine Art Schadensabwicklung (Frankfurt am Main, 1987), 115–58; English translation: “A Kind of Indemnification: The Tendencies toward Apologia in German Research on Current History,” Yad Vashem Studies (19) 1988: 75–92; R. J. Evans, In Hitler’s Shadow: West German Historians and the Attempt to Escape from the Nazi Past (New York, 1989); G. Eley, “Nazism, Politics and Public Memory: Thoughts on the West German Historikerstreit, 1986–87,” Past and Present, no. 121 (1988): 171–208; M. Nolan, “The Historikerstreit and Social History,” New German Critique, no. 44 (1988): 51–80; D. Diner, “Historical Experience and Cognition: Perspectives on National Socialism,” History & Memory 2, no. 1 (1990): 85–

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110; D. Schmidt and H. Gerstenberger, Normalität; G. Ehler et al., eds., Geschichtswende? Entsorgungsversuche zur deutschen Vergangenheit (Freiburg, 1987); H.-U. Wehler, Entsorgung der deutschen Vergangenheit? Ein polemischer Essay zum “Historikerstreit” (Munich, 1988); P. Baldwin, ed., Reworking the Past: History, the Holocaust and the Historians’ Debate (Boston, 1990); see also H.-W. Schmuhl, “Der Geschichtsphilosoph vor dem Massengrab. Ernst Nolte über den modernen Antisemitismus, die nationalsozialistische Judenpolitik und die ‘Endlösung der Judenfrage,’ ” Tel Aviver Jahrbuch für deutsche Geschichte 19 (1990): 519–60. 18. J. Kocka, “Geschichte als Aufklärung?” Frankfurter Rundschau, January 4, 1988; see also J. Rüsen et al., eds., Die Zukunft der Aufklärung (Frankfurt am Main, 1988), 97. 19. H.-U. Wehler, “Königsweg zu neuen Ufern oder Irrgarten der Illusionen? Die westdeutsche Alltagsgeschichte: Geschichte ‘von innen’ und ‘von unten,’ ” in “Geschichte von unten—Geschichte von innen”—Kontroversen um die Alltagsgeschichte, ed. F.-J. Brüggemeier and J. Kocka (FernUniversität Hagen, 1985), 47. 20. See J. Kocka, “Hitler soll nicht durch Stalin und Pol Pot verdrängt werden. Über Versuche deutscher Historiker, die Ungeheuerlichkeit von NS-Verbrechen zu relativieren,” in Augstein, ed., “Historikerstreit” (Munich, 1987), 137. 21. J. Habermas, “Eine Art Schadensabwicklung,” 142; Habermas, “Geschichtsbewußtsein und posttraditionale Identität: Die Westbindung der Bundesrepublik,” in Habermas, Eine Art Schadensabwicklung, 162, 173f. (originally published November 1986 in Die Zeit and May 1987 in Frankfurter Rundschau). 22. See B. Hahn and P. Schöttler, “Jürgen Habermas und das ‘ungetrübte Bewußtsein des Bruchs,’ ” in Normalität, ed. D. Schmidt and H. Gerstenberger, 170–77. 23. A debate in many respects more sharply “polarized” in the two festschrift volumes dedicated to the Marxist historian Eric Hobsbawm on the occasion of his sixty-fifth birthday; papers with a more everyday-historical thrust can be found in R. Samuel and G. Stedman Jones, eds., Culture, Ideology and Politics (London, 1983); there is greater emphasis on social-historical aspects in P. Thane, G. Crossick, and R. Floud, eds., The Power of the Past (Cambridge, 1984). 24. J. Kuczynski, Geschichte des Alltags des deutschen Volkes, vols. 1–5 (Berlin [GDR] and Cologne, 1980–82); Kuczynski, Geschichte des Alltags des deutschen Volkes, Nachträgliche Gedanken (Berlin [GDR] and Cologne, 1985). In his view, historical change in “everyday life” does not occur until the spread of factory industrialization. From “1870 B.C. to 1870 A.D.,” the “main events in everyday life” were only “work, eating and sexual intercourse”; see J. Kuczynski, “Erlebnisse beim Schreiben einer Geschichte des Alltags des deutschen Volkes seit 1600,” ibid., 70. For more extensive studies on the nineteenth century, see S. and W. Jacobeit, Illustrierte Alltagsgeschichte des deutschen Volkes, 1810–1900 (Cologne, 1987); for visual aspects, see Jacobeit, Illustrierte Alltagsgeschichte des deutschen Volkes, 1550–1810 (Cologne, 1986). Studies by the group around D. Mühlberg are less burdened by the guild-parochial discussions of professional historians; see Mühlberg, ed., Proletariat. Kultur und Lebensweise im 19. Jahrhundert (Leipzig, 1986); see also the contribution by H. Dehne in the present volume.

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25. H.-U. Wehler, “Geschichtswissenschaft heute,” in Stichworte zur “Geistigen Situation der Zeit”, ed. J. Habermas, vol. 2 (Frankfurt am Main, 1979), 744; available in English translation as “Historiography in Germany Today,” in Observations on the “Spiritual Situation of the Age,” ed. J. Habermas (Cambridge, Mass., 1984), 221–59. 26. My remarks here are based in part on polemic critical objections formulated in a number of variants especially by H.-U. Wehler; see his “Königsweg zu neuen Ufern oder Irrgarten der Illusionen? Die westdeutsche Alltagsgeschichte: Geschichte ‘von innen’ und ‘von unten,’ ” (Bielefeld, November 1984, typewritten manuscript). This initially unpublished paper, circulated from Bielefeld to Los Angeles, had a major impact on the “field” of the debate. A slightly abridged version was published in 1985 (see n. 19 above). It was subsequently issued in its original form as “Alltagsgeschichte: Königsweg zu neuen Ufern oder Irrgarten der Illusionen?” in Wehler, Aus der Geschichte lernen? (see n. 15 above). Wehler’s “posturing” is lamented by P. Borscheid, “Alltagsgeschichte—Modetorheit oder neues Tor zur Vergangenheit?” in Sozialgeschichte in Deutschland, ed. W. Schieder and V. Selling, vol. 3 (Göttingen, 1987), 85; at the same time, however, Borscheid continues à la Wehler to try to avoid a controversy. In line with this, he hopes the “missionaries in the rowboat” will be “stranded”—on “coasts empty of any human beings”—a complete misinterpretation of what the image actually intends to express; that too also represents an attempt to sidestep any serious discussion (“Alltagsgeschichte,” 87)! Clearly with the intention of promoting productive clarification, J. Kocka has provided an informed discussion of the objections from the perspective of “historical social science”; see his Sozialgeschichte, 2d ed. (Göttingen, 1986), chap. 4, esp. 152–60, 162–74. See likewise K. Tenfelde, “Schwierigkeiten mit dem Alltag,” Geschichte und Gesellschaft 10 (1984): 376–94. A comprehensive and well-balanced treatment of the controversies surrounding “everyday life,” “mode of life,” and class relations is given by H. Dehne, “Aller Tage Leben,” Jahrbuch für Volkskunde and Kulturgeschichte 28 (1985): 9–48; see also his essay in the present volume. 27. For more detailed treatment, see my sketch “ ‘Fahrt ins Dunkle’?” In contrast, H. Medick has argued in favor of utilizing the idea of field research for a new conception of historical hermeneutics, one that is no longer concerned with demonstrating the principal identity of respective experiences (but note H. G. Gadamer, Wahrheit und Methode, 2d ed. [Tübingen, 1965], 284ff., 449ff.); see also Medick’s contribution in this volume. For a general discussion, see S. Sangren, “Rhetoric and the Authority of Ethnography,” Current Anthropology 29 (1988): 405–35. 28. A comprehensive overview of problems in oral history can be found in L. Niethammer, “Fragen—Antworten—Fragen,” in “Wir kriegen jetzt andere Zeiten,” ed. Niethammer and A. von Plato (Berlin-Bonn, 1985), 392–445; for a standard introduction to the field, see P. Thompson, The Voice of the Past, 2d ed. (London, 1990). 29. C. Ginzburg and C. Poni, “Was ist Mikrogeschichte?” Geschichtswerkstatt 6 (1985): 51. 30. Bourdieu, Entwurf einer Theorie der Praxis, 165. 31. P. Bourdieu, Zur Soziologie der symbolischen Formen (Frankfurt am Main, 1974, 40.

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32. See also N. Schindler, “Für eine Geschichte realer Möglichkeiten. Nachwort,” in N. Z. Davis, Humanismus, Narrenherrschaft und die Riten der Gewalt (Frankfurt am Main, 1987; originally published as Society and Culture in Early Modern France: Eight Essays [Stanford, 1975]), 335–37. 33. Kocka, Sozialgeschichte, 168–69; see also n. 26 above. 34. See also D. Sabean, “Zur Bedeutung von Kontext, sozialer Logik und Erfahrung,” in “Geschichte von unten,” ed. F. J. Brüggemeier and J. Kocka, 52–60. 35. K. Marx, Grundrisse der Kritik der politischen Ökonomie (1857/58) (Frankfurt am Main and Vienna, n.d. [1973]), 30f.; see also E. Bloch, “Summary Transition: Non-Contemporaneity and Obligation to its Dialectic,” in Heritage of Our Times, trans. Neville and Stephen Plaice (Berkeley, 1990), 97–148. 36. S. Lindquist, Grabe, wo du stehst: Handbuch zur Erforschung der eigenen Geschichte, trans. M. Dammeyer (Bonn, 1989). 37. The expression was suggested by Jürgen Habermas in connection with a comprehensive systematic proposal in social theory; J. Habermas, The Theory of Communicative Action, vol. 2 (Boston, 1984 [1981]). The concept can be found in an abbreviated and more “handy” form in D. Peukert, “Arbeiteralltag—Mode oder Methode?” in Arbeiteralltag in Stadt und Land, ed. H. Haumann (Berlin, 1982), 26ff. An approach to how “mobilization” or “capitalization,” for example, can be treated theoretically while also being examined historically is presented in D. W. Cohen, “Doing Social History from Pim’s Doorway,” in Reliving the Past, ed. O. Zunz (Chapel Hill and London, 1985), 191–235. 38. Habermas, The Theory of Communicative Action, vol. 2. 39. K. L. Pfeiffer, “Produktive Labilität. Funktionen des Stilbegriffs,” in Stil: Geschichten und Funktionen eines kulturwissenschaftlichen Diskurselements, ed. H. U. Gumbrecht and K. L. Pfeiffer (Frankfurt am Main, 1986), 710ff. 40. Investigations dealing with governmental and associational medical policy, the curing and social exclusion of “the sick,” have only begun to examine the behavioral patterns of the “laity”; a comprehensive summary can be found in R. Spree, Soziale Ungleichheit vor Krankheit und Tod: Zur Sozialgeschichte des Gesundheitsbereichs im Deutschen Kaiserreich (Göttingen, 1981); on the practice of doctors, see also G. Göckenjan, “Medizin und Ärzte als Faktor der Disziplinierung der Unterschichten. Der Kassenarzt,” in Soziale Sicherheit und soziale Disziplinierung, ed. C. Sachße and F. Tennstedt (Frankfurt am Main, 1986), 286– 303. A systematic evaluation of autobiographical material could help advance the discussion; see C. Lipp, “ ‘Uns hat die Mutter Not gesäugt an ihrem dürren Leibe.’ Die Verarbeitung von Hungererfahrungen in Autobiographien von Handwerkern, Arbeitern und Arbeiterinnen,” Beiträge zur historischen Sozialkunde, no. 2 (1985): 54–58. 41. K. Saul, “Der Staat und die ‘Mächte des Umsturzes,’ ” Archiv für Sozialgeschichte 12 (1972): 293–350. 42. This area has been little explored to date, but see the summary remarks in G. A. Ritter, Sozialversicherung in Deutschland und England: Entstehung und Grundzüge im Vergleich (Munich, 1983), 62–65; reports on social arbitration proceedings, though restricted to individual cases, remain an informative source; see R. Wissell, Aus meinen Lebensjahren (Berlin, 1983); see likewise U. Borsdorf, Hans Böckler: Arbeit und Leben eines Gewerkschafters von 1875 bis 1945 (Cologne, 1982).

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43. Wehler, “Geschichtswissenschaft heute,” 743. 44. J. Kocka, “Bürgertum und Bürgerlichkeit als Probleme der deutschen Geschichte vom späten 18. zum frühen 20. Jahrhundert,” in Kocka, ed., Bürger und Bürgerlichkeit im 19. Jahrhundert (Göttingen, 1987), 44; see also remarks on the “seduction” and “seeping effect . . . of bourgeois norms and values” in H.-U. Wehler, “Wie bürgerlich war das Deutsche Kaiserreich?” in Kocka, ibid., 252. 45. A. Schütz and T. Luckmann, The Structures of the Life-World, trans. Richard M. Zamer and David J. Parent, vol. 2 (Evanston, 1989 [1983]), 3f. 46. U. Jeggle, Kiebingen—eine Heimatgeschichte (Tübingen, 1977); W. Kaschuba and C. Lipp, Dörfliches Überleben: Zur Geschichte der materiellen und sozialen Reproduktion ländlicher Gesellschaft im 19. und frühen 20. Jahrhundert (Tübingen, 1982). 47. J. Mooser, Ländliche Klassengesellschaft 1780–1848: Bauern und Unterschichten, Landwirtschaft und Gewerbe im östlichen Westfalen (Göttingen, 1984); E. Lucas, Zwei Formen von Radikalismus in der deutschen Arbeiterbewegung (Frankfurt am Main, 1976); F.-J. Brüggemeier, Leben vor Ort: Ruhrbergleute und Ruhrbergbau 1889–1914 (Munich, 1983); M. Grüttner, Arbeitswelt an der Wasserkante: Sozialgeschichte der Hamburger Hafenarbeiter 1886–1914 (Göttingen, 1984); H. Steffens, Autorität und Revolte: Alltagsleben und Streikverhalten der Bergarbeiter an der Saar im 19. Jahrhundert (Weingarten, 1987). 48. U. Nienhaus, Berufsstand weiblich: Die ersten weiblichen Angestellten (Berlin, 1982); C. Lipp, ed., Schimpfende Weiber und patriotische Jungfrauen (Moos and Baden-Baden, 1986); on the discussion of perspectives in women’s history, see K. Hausen, “Patriarchat—Vom Nutzen und Nachteil eines Konzepts für Frauengeschichte und Frauenpolitik,” Journal für Geschichte, no. 5 (1986): 12–21, 58. See also the contribution in this volume by D. Wierling. 49. See the case descriptions and analyses in D. W. Sabean, Power in the Blood: Village Discourse in Early Modern Germany (Cambridge, 1984). 50. R. Wirtz, “Die Ordnung in der Fabrik ist nicht die Fabrikordnung. Bemerkungen zur Erziehung in der Fabrik während der frühen Industrialisierung an südwestdeutschen Beispielen,” in Arbeiteralltag in Stadt und Land, ed. H. Haumann (Das Argument, Sonderband 94) (Berlin, 1982), 61–88; A. Lüdtke, “Arbeitsbeginn, Arbeitspausen, Arbeitsende. Skizzen zu Bedürfnisbefriedigung und Industriearbeit im 19. und frühen 20. Jahrhundert,” in Sozialgeschichte der Freizeit, 2d ed., ed. G. Huck (Wuppertal, 1982), 95–122. 51. A. Suter, “Troublen” im Fürstbistum Basel (1728–1740): Eine Fallstudie zum bäuerlichen Widerstand im 18. Jahrhundert (Göttingen, 1985), esp. 349ff., 355ff. 52. H. Bock and W. Heise, eds., Unzeit des Biedermeiers: Historische Miniaturen zum deutschen Vormärz, 1830–48 (Leipzig, 1985). For examples, see also H. C. Ehalt et al., eds., Glücklich ist, wer vergißt . . . ? Das andere Wien um 1900 (Vienna, 1986); C. Stansell, City of Women: Sex and Class in New York, 1789– 1860 (New York, 1986), esp. “The Politics of Sociability” (39–101) and “Politics of the Street” (171–216); Michelle Perrot, ed., From the Fires of Revolution to the Great War, vol. 4 of A History of Private Life (Cambridge, Mass., 1987); questions regarding “actors,” “spaces,” and the “secrets of the individual” open up

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perspectives for a “knitting together” of the various individual descriptions. Yet there can be no doubt that the challenge represented by the work of Walter Benjamin—who attempted to “show” an entire “age” in the “most extreme concreteness” of individual scenes and descriptions—has not been met; see Benjamin, letter to G. Scholem, March 15, 1929, in Benjamin, Briefe, ed. G. Scholem and T. W. Adorno (Frankfurt am Main, 1966), 491. See also A. Söllner, Peter Weiss und die Deutschen (Opladen, 1988), 145ff., 200ff. Reference could be made to the novels and stories of Theodor Fontane and his fictional recreation of Junker and aristocrat society during the late Bismarck empire—which is more suitable: Fontane’s novel Stechlin or H.-U. Wehler’s study on the Kaiserreich (see n. 44)? 53. One should note the renewed discussion on “narration” in historiography and the rhetorical (basic) elements of all historiographical presentation; see H. White, Metahistory: The Historical Imagination in 19th Century Europe (Baltimore, 1973). For an approach which does not reduce matters to the structure of narration, note M. de Certeau, “Die Geschichte: Wissenschaft und Fiktion,” in Die Zeichen der Historie, ed. G. Schmid (Graz and Vienna, 1986), 34–37 and 47–49; H. R. Jauss, “Der Gebrauch der Fiktion in Formen der Anschauung und Darstellung der Geschichte,” in Formen der Geschichtsschreibung, ed. R. Koselleck et al. (Munich, 1982), 415–51. Especially intriguing in my view is the question regarding different “idioms” of theory, i.e., whether theory is not in fact presented and communicated even in seemingly atheoretical narrative; see T. Lindenberger, “Das ‘empirische Idiom’: Geschichtsschreibung, Theorie und Politik in The Making of the English Working Class,” Probleme des Klassenkampfs 18, no. 70 (1988): 182–88. 54. See the intriguing effort to present a collage of pictures and texts of very different genres in order to explore potentials and limitations of the subjects’ autonomy in the context of recent German history by O. Negt and A. Kluge, Geschichte und Eigensinn (Frankfurt am Main, 1981); a revised and enlarged second edition appeared recently (Frankfurt am Main, 1993). 55. E. P. Thompson, “The Moral Economy of the English Crowd in the Eighteenth Century,” Past and Present, no. 50 (1971): 76–136. 56. One should naturally also call attention here to pioneering studies on topics in medieval history, such as A. J. Gurjewitsch, Das Weltbild des mittelalterlichen Menschen (Dresden, 1978 [1972]); E. LeRoy Ladurie, Montaillou, village occitan de 1294 à 1324 (Paris, 1975); LeRoy Ladurie, Le Carnaval de Romans: de la Chandeleur au mercredi des Cendres, 1579–1580 (Paris, 1979); A. Borst, Lebensformen im Mittelalter (Frankfurt am Main, 1979). 57. N. Z. Davis, “The Reasons of Misrule” and “Women on Top,” in Davis, Society and Culture in Early Modern France (Stanford, 1975), 97–123 and 124– 51; see also P. Burke, Popular Culture in Early Modern Europe (London, 1978). 58. V. Maher, Women and Property in Morocco (Cambridge, 1984); Maher, “Possession and Dispossession: Maternity and Morality in Morocco,” in Interest and Emotion: Essays on the Study of Family and Kinship, ed. H. Medick and D. Sabean (Cambridge, 1984), 103–28. Y. Verdier, Façons de dire, façons de faire: la laveuse, la couturière, la cuisinière (Paris, 1979). 59. C. Ginzburg, The Cheese and the Worms: The Cosmos of a SixteenthCentury Miller (Baltimore, 1980 [1976]); on the implications and emphases of

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Ginzburg’s approach and methodology, see Ginzburg, Spurensicherungen: Über verborgene Geschichte, Kunst und soziales Gedächtnis (Berlin, 1983; English translation: Clues, Myths, and the Historical Method [Baltimore, 1989]). D. LaCapra has questioned Ginzburg’s strategies of interpretation in “The Cheese and the Worms: The Cosmos of a Twentieth-Century Historian,” in LaCapra, History and Criticism (Ithaca, 1985), 45–70. 60. See the program of “Geschichtsfest ’84” in Berlin in Moderne Zeiten 4, no. 4 (1984), and reports in Geschichtswerkstatt-Rundbrief, no. 4 (August 1984); A. G. Frei, “Spannungsfelder. Geschichtsfest Berlin,” Journal für Geschichte, no. 4 (1984): 4–7; Anthony McElligott, “The German History Workshop Festival in Berlin, May–June 1984,” German History 2 (1985): 21–29. 61. C. Wolf, Kindheitsmuster (Darmstadt, 1977 [1976]). 62. C. Wolf, “Ein Satz,” in Wolf, Fortgesetzter Versuch. Aufsätze, Gespräche, Essays (Leipzig, 1979), 141. 63. Regarding the present state of the discussion on hermeneutics among historians, see G. O. Oexle, “Die Geschichtswissenschaft im Zeichen des Historismus,” Historische Zeitschrift 238 (1984): 17–55. 64. L. Niethammer, ed., “Die Jahre weiß man nicht, wo man die heute hinsetzen soll” (Berlin and Bonn, 1983); Niethammer, ed., “Hinterher merkt man, daß es richtig war, daß es schiefgegangen ist” (Berlin-Bonn, 1983); Niethammer and A. von Plato, eds., “Wir kriegen jetzt andere Zeiten” (Berlin and Bonn, 1985); see the review article by R. Wirtz, “Lese-Erfahrungen—mit mündlicher Geschichte,” Sozialwissenschaftliche Informationen (hereafter SOWI) 15, no. 3 (1986): 33– 43. 65. P. Stripp, Rote Erde (Munich, 1983). This is the novel companion to the television film by the same name, broadcast as a series by the WDR (Westdeutscher Rundfunk, Third Channel) in the late autumn of 1983. 66. See “ ‘Deswegen waren unsere Muttis so sympathische Hühner’ (Edgar Reitz). Diskussion zu Heimat,” Frauen und Film, no. 38 (1985); see also M. Hansen, “Dossier on Heimat,” New German Critique, no. 36 (1985): 3–24. The three-part series by Käthe Kratz entitled Lebenslinien (ZDF [Second Channel], 1984) is quite similar in respect to narrative and cinematographic approach. 67. C. Lanzmann, Shoah (Düsseldorf, 1985); see T. Judt, “Moving Pictures,” Radical History Review, no. 41 (1988): 129–44; P. Schöttler, “ ‘Der Blick zurück ist nicht genug.’ Dokumentarfilme über das Nazi-System und die Gegenwart,” Geschichtswerkstatt, no. 12 (1987): 112–15; A. Kaes, “History and Film: Public Memory in the Age of Electronic Dissemination,” History & Memory 2, no. 1 (1990): 111–29, and especially his From ‘Hitler’ to ‘Heimat’: the Return of History as Film (Cambridge, Mass., 1989); more generally, also N. Z. Davis, “ ‘Any Resemblance to Persons Living or Dead?’ Film and the Challenge of Authenticity,” Yale Review 76, no. 4 (1987), and R. A. Rosenstone, “History in Images/ History in Words: Reflections on the Possibility of Really Putting History onto Film,” American Historical Review 93 (1988): 1173–85. 68. See the summary by M. Scharrer, Macht Geschichte von unten (Cologne, 1988). 69. D. Lecke, ed., Handbuch Spurensicherung—Lebensorte als Lernorte (Kassel, 1983). Projects focusing on the educational aspects of museum work have

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increasingly served to stimulate or promote studies on the history of everyday life; see Museumspädagogischer Dienst Berlin, ed., Geschichtsarbeit im Stadtteil: Bericht über das Projekt “Borsig und Borsigwalde—wir entdecken unsere Geschichte” (Berlin, 1986). The interest in relevant studies among a broad array of adult education centers (Volkshochschulen) seems even stronger; for the state of North Rhine–Westphalia, see the list contained in M. Brown and K. I. Rogge, comps., Von der Lokalgeschichte zur Stadtteilkommunikation (Soest, 1987), 19– 38. 70. One should especially note the establishment of the “Geschichtswerkstatt e.V.” as a nationwide association in April 1983 (after a preparatory phase lasting more than two years); to date, twenty-four issues of the serial publication Geschichtswerkstatt (initially in the form of a circular, and since 1985 as a periodical) have been published (as of winter 1991–92); since the spring of 1992, the journal has been published separately from “Geschichtswerkstatt e.V.” under the title WerkstattGeschichte. Moreover, five national conferences or Geschichtstreffen have been held since 1984 (in Berlin, Hamburg, Dortmund, Hannover, and Bonn). Individual working groups (e.g., those dealing with “postwar history” and “bourgeois society”) have also held conferences. 71. An informative overview can be found in G. Paul and B. Schoßig, eds., Die andere Geschichte: Geschichte von unten. Spurensicherung. Ökologische Geschichte. Geschichtswerkstätten (Cologne, 1986); on fields for investigation and techniques, see also H. Heer and V. Ullrich, eds., Geschichte entdecken (Reinbek, 1985). 72. On this, see some of the titles and projects mentioned in n. 2 above as well as reports in Geschichtswerkstatt, such as those on the controversy over National Memorial Day (Volkstrauertag). 73. See especially Geschichtswerkstatt Berlin, ed., Die Nation als Ausstellungsstück: Planungen, Kritik und Utopien zu den Museumsgründungen in Bonn und Berlin (Geschichtswerkstatt, no. 11) (Hamburg, 1987); see in particular contributions by F. T. Gatter, V. Wunderich, FFBIZ, and esp. D. HoffmannAxthelm, 53, 57, 60. 74. Only a few days before unification on October 3, 1990, the government of the GDR shut down its Museum of German History in East Berlin and appointed the director of the German Historical Museum (West Berlin) to take charge of it. Since then, the German Historical Museum has been housed in the Zeughaus, the baroque armory located on Unter den Linden. Meanwhile (autumn 1994), the plans to erect a new and grand building next to the old Reichstag have been cancelled. 75. G. Zang, with his proposal to view “structural biography” as a methodological principle in the history of everyday life, remains largely at the level of the explanation of methods; see Zang, Die unaufhaltsame Annäherung an das Einzelne: Reflexionen über den theoretischen und praktischen Nutzen der Regional- und Alltagsgeschichte (Konstanz, 1985). Regarding criticism of projects and concepts in alltagsgeschichte in respect to content and the politics of research, see A. G. Frei and M. Wildt, “Hirsebrei und Seifenblasen. Die Geschichtswerkstatt und ihre Kritiker,” Geschichtswerkstatt, no. 10 (1986): 12–15. By comparison, the level of self-critical debate is inadequate and needs to be further

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developed; but see D. Trittel, “Geschichtswerkstätten—auch eine ‘Heimatbewegung’?” Geschichtswerkstatt, no. 6 (1985): 25–31; M. Leuenberger, “Entpolitisiert der Alltag die Geschichte?” Widerspruch [Zurich], no. 10 (1985): 58–69. 76. See the basic remarks by de Certeau, “Die Geschichte,” 32ff., 46f. 77. An especially impressive example was provided by the exhibition put together by miners on their Gneisenau mine (shut down in 1985), located between Dortmund and Lünen: “Leben mit Gneisenau” (Ausstellung der VHS im städtischen Museum für Kunst und Kulturgeschichte), Dortmund, September 12 to October 26, 1986; see also the collective exhibition of history workshop groups in Bremen, “Entdeckte Geschichte,” held October 3–10, 1986, at the Old Town Hall, Bremen (and the program booklet by the same title).

2 “MISSIONARIES IN THE ROWBOAT”? ETHNOLOGICAL WAYS OF KNOWING AS A CHALLENGE TO SOCIAL HISTORY Hans Medick

Children are happy when they throw stones into the water, but to the family of frogs this can cause great sorrow. —Luo proverb, Kenya

In Lieu of a Preface: Who Are Those Missionaries in the Rowboat?

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HE IMAGE “missionaries in the rowboat” is borrowed from an essay by the American anthropologist Bernard S. Cohn, “Anthropology and History: The State of the Play,” published in 1980.1 With this image, Cohn created a kind of ironic ideal type meant to characterize the attitude of some anthropologists, principally functionalists, toward the problem of history. For these ethnologists, history outside of Europe and apart from the non-European high cultures does not begin until European civilization, economy, and religion—or why shouldn’t one say “Occidental rationality”—start making inroads into the life of “people without history” (Eric Wolf). In this model, the missionary, the trader, the labor recruiter or the government official arrives with the bible, the mumu, tobacco, steel axes or other items of Western domination on an island whose society and culture are rocking along in the never-never land of structural functionalism, and with the onslaught of the new, the social structure, values and lifeways of the “happy” natives crumble. The anthropologist follows in the wake of the

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impacts caused by the Western agents of change, and then tries to recover what might have been. . . . These structures the anthropologist finds have always been there, unbeknownst to their passive carriers, functioning to keep the natives in their timeless spaceless paradise.2

Cohn aims the sights of this ironic ideal type particularly at his fellow anthropologists of functionalist or structuralist persuasion. Yet I believe he has been too modest in limiting this model only to a few scholars from his own field, and would contend that there is a quite similar angle of vision prevalent among historians as well. The current of “historical social science” (historische Sozialwissenschaft) is its chief, though by no means sole, representative in our own discipline in Germany: in any event, the element common to both is a centrist view of history. Centrism of this kind seeks to categorize historical phenomena, positioning them at the “margin” or the “center” of historical events, in accordance with their supposed role in the “great transformation”—that is, that shift associated with the processes of modernization, industrialization, urbanization, and the rise of the bureaucratic nation-state. Such a centrist historical perspective typifies that breed of historians who take Euro-American processes of industrialization and modernization in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries as their point of departure. But it is also found further afield, and is just as characteristic of the approach prevalent among historians of the early modern period, such as Fernand Braudel, whose magisterial work Civilisation matérielle, économie et capitalisme3 views the sphere of everyday “material culture” as ahistorical, so to speak, compared with the historical dynamism generated by early modern mercantilism. Braudel’s famous study on the Mediterranean world also contains passages bearing the hallmarks of a centrist perspective on history, for example when he likens certain mountainous areas in Europe to islands floating outside the currents of civilization and history. “Generally, the mountains form a world of their own, far removed from civilization. Their history is to have no history, persisting almost perennially at the margin of the great waves of civilization.”4 Yet perspectives in cultural anthropology developed beyond the confines of structuralism and functionalism can lead to a fundamental questioning of such centrist and unilinear ways of viewing history. On the one hand, they make apparent that cultures which were only too quickly assumed to be immutable and devoid of history (and therefore incidental to the historical process) in fact had a contradictory and complex history of their own long before the “modern” period, including their own indigenous forms of historical consciousness and its transmission. On the other hand, the ethnographic perspective, rendered more sensitive and acute by the interpretation of foreign cultures, shapes our sights for the investigation and appreciation of a double Otherness: the strange and alien aspects

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of our own European culture and history, and the effective role of cultural differences and contrasts as decisive forces underpinning and propelling historical change, experience, and representation.

Terminus a Quo: Shortcomings in Social History in the 1960s and 1970s Research in social history is faced with a fundamental methodological conundrum, namely, how to comprehend and present the dual constitution of historical processes, the simultaneity of given and produced relations, the complex mutual interdependence between encompassing structures and the concrete practice of “subjects,” between circumstances of life, relations of production and authority on the one hand, and the experiences and modes of behavior of those affected on the other. To date, no satisfactory solution to this problem has been forthcoming from practitioners of the direction in social history known as historical social science, which established itself in the Federal Republic in the 1960s and 1970s,5 with analogous developments in scholarship especially in the United States, and in France and Great Britain to some extent as well. Various reasons can be suggested to account for this state of affairs. One was advanced by Lawrence Stone, who reproached historical social science for its preoccupation with socioeconomic “circumstances” to the concomitant neglect of the human actors. As the only way out of this reductionist impasse, Stone recommended a “revival of historical narrative.”6 No matter how critically one may regard Stone’s simplistic prescription of “revival,”7 his diagnosis is correct in respect to at least one salient feature of the German version of historical social science, namely, that it has developed its self-understanding (and its practice) as social history and the history of society largely on the basis of conceptions which remain caught up in the categorial dichotomy of the subjective and objective dimensions of the historical process. Indeed, for all its emphasis on the critical distance between this approach and historicism, historische Sozialwissenschaft is still tainted with a historicist individualistic bias: it defines the mediation of the subjective and objective elements in the historical process primarily as a problem of combining methodological approaches—the synthesis of analytical and generalizing procedures from social science with the individualizing, Verstehen-oriented methods in hermeneutics.8 Yet precisely because of this reduction of the entire problematic of social history to questions of methodological and technical refinement, this current is unable to come to proper terms with the objective cultural meaning of structures and their role in those historical processes—matters with which social history must deal, whether it wants to or not. By a

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kind of technocratic interposition, historical social science transforms what ought initially to be a question of self-enlightenment and critical unearthing of one’s own understanding of history—enhanced reflection on the perspective of approach, and the assessment and comprehension of historical processes, structures, complexes of action and experience—into a purportedly timeless methodological problem or one involving the marshaling of concepts. Only secondarily is this a question of methods, procedures, and suitable theories. Both in theory and in practice, historische Sozialwissenschaft has devoted insufficient attention to the problem of how to come to know structures such as class relations and relations of production and authority in their “structuring.”9 These relations are always transmitted through cultural meanings and social practice. That is, it has failed to understand these structures as mutable and changing components within—and simultaneously the products of—situated actions and experiences of concrete persons, groups, classes, cultures, and modes of life. Yet that is precisely the decisive point. For only when these questions are addressed can one engage in and write the history of society as effective social history, in which the dynamics of historical praxis are recalled and made visible—rather than as a contracted history of society reduced to the combination of “dimensions,” “factors,” and “subsystems” of the historical process.10 In this connection, it is not surprising that there has been only scant scrutiny of the problem of culture or the cultural formation and concretization, conversion and “generating” of structures and situated actions. If culture has been dealt with as a specific theme, it has been considered only in the sense of a social subsystem that is relatively static and closed off upon itself,11 not as a central dynamic and formative factor in the everyday “realization” and transformation of social, economic, and political relations. All of this is indicative of shortcomings that characterize not only historical social science per se, but also the various social sciences to which it makes reference, as P. H. Abrams has noted in his controversy with Stone.12 Only viewed from this position can we appreciate Stone’s radical critique of historische Sozialwissenschaft, formulated with his inimitable polemical sarcasm: “it might be time for the historical rats to leave rather than to scramble aboard the social scientific ship which seems to be leaking and undergoing major repair.”13 Increasingly conscious of these “dead-end streets,” “automatisms,” and the “false evidence of historical knowledge”14 inherent in a brand of social history that understood itself in this way as “historical social science,” a number of social historians have been looking for some time now further afield, namely, to research and methods in social and cultural anthropology.15 For here, in the work of ethnographers, it was more likely than elsewhere that approaches could be found and productively utilized to tackle the dilemma just outlined. Of course, in learning from such eth-

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nographic perspectives, historians wished to avoid the pitfalls of the 1960s and 1970s: the mere appropriation or borrowing of social-scientific concepts and theories and their application in historical research had not resulted in a solution then. However, that danger has been rendered somewhat less acute by the presence of a countervailing tendency: in recent years, a growing number of anthropologists have been moving quite clearly in the direction of inquiry that is itself historically oriented,16 sometimes with enthusiastic, programmatic pronouncements. E. E. Evans-Pritchard was still a lone voice in the structural-functionalist wilderness of the 1950s and 1960s. At that time he directed a prophetic warning to both anthropologists and historians: “Anthropology must choose between being history and being nothing. . . . History must choose between being social anthropology or being nothing.”17 In the past decade, that admonition has met with a positive response in various anthropological currents and schools, and, in fact, has intensified into a programmatic call for anthropologizing history, as enunciated by Marshall Sahlins: [L]e jour est arrivé. Practice clearly has gone beyond the theoretical differences that are supposed to divide anthropology and history. Anthropologists rise from the abstract structure to the explication of the concrete event. Historians devalue the unique event in favor of underlying recurrent structures. And also paradoxically, anthropologists are as often diachronic in outlook as historians nowadays are synchronic. . . . The problem now is to explode the concept of history by the anthropological experience of culture. . . . Suddenly, there are all kinds of new things to consider.18

Yet such calls by social and cultural anthropologists for an “anthropologizing of history” should not be confused with concepts that have been bandied about in the Federal Republic since the late 1960s—parallel with developments in historical social science and in part as a critique of that current—within the framework of the ongoing discussion on “historical anthropology,” however close the external similarity between such conceptions and the notion of an “anthropologized science of history.”19 In its German variant, “historical anthropology” evolved and legitimated itself, at least in initial stages, based on a tradition which differed from the insights of ethnology and Völkerkunde, and especially from the discipline of cultural and social anthropology as it had developed in Great Britain, the United States, and elsewhere. In Germany, it tied into the essentialist-philosophical or ontologically oriented philosophical tradition of “anthropology” coming down from the eighteenth century. Whereas the “anthropologizing” of our historical understanding, as called for critically by ethnology, thrives upon being linked to the historical (self-)understanding of foreign, non-European cultures and the associated critique of attempts to universalize an ethno-

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centric—that is, Eurocentric—historical consciousness and image of history, the German brand of historical anthropology was specifically oriented toward such a universalized conception of history.20 Focus was not on the differences and Otherness of other cultures and times, but centered instead on the shared features of “fundamental modes of human behavior” transcending society, culture, and epoch. Despite all interest in the “historicity of anthropological structures,” a perspective predominated that was ultimately determined by “what . . . abides in and after change.”21 Over the years, there have been important shifts, modifications, and expansions in this discussion,22 producing some interesting results.23 In the meantime, the “historicizing of facts closely associated with anthropology”24—called for in 1975 by W. Lepenies, pointing to the achievements of the French Annales school of historians—has since established itself as an approach that is by no means aimless or random. In terms of both content and methodology, the various directions within “historical anthropology” have concentrated on inquiry into primary modes of human behavior and experience, and basic situations in human life. Interest centers on the history of birth, marriage, illness, and death, modes and patterns of behavior in various phases of life as well as the history of social groups and relations. As is evident from the work of Arthur E. Imhof and Michael Mitterauer, historical demography and the social history of the family have profited as a result of their openness to impulses and ideas from “historical anthropology,” leading to a significant expansion of horizons.25 Of course, one should note that only quite recently have the various subcurrents within “historical anthropology” begun to confront the challenges posed by social and cultural anthropology. In continuing down this path, the paramount thrust of such challenges must lie in the more intensive development of comparative perspectives that refract light into Europe from outside rather than the reverse. In any event, ethnocentrism—at least in latent form—remains a danger as long as research in Europe on the “histoire totale de l’homme” fails to engage in explicit, noncentrist comparisons with the modes of life and cultures of non-European peoples.

Social History Turns toward Cultural and Social Anthropology Without any claim to completeness, I would now like to discuss several of the most fundamental methodological expectations, questions, and challenges that have led to a budding of mutual interest among historians and social and cultural anthropologists, and which lend this interest a rele-

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vance beyond the ambit of intensive discussion in small professional circles. It does not seem coincidental to me that among historians—aside from isolated exceptions—it is primarily representatives of directions in social history situated at the margins of the guild who have tried to articulate their own questions with the aid of social-anthropological perspectives. This is particularly true in work on folk culture,26 women’s history,27 the history of gender relations,28 family history,29 the history of everyday life,30 and working-class history.31 Common to all these directions in their turning toward social and cultural anthropology is the questioning of centrist and unilinear ways of seeing.32 They make clear that phenomena too hastily assumed to be marginal to the historical process, such as women’s history or the history of modes of thinking and expression in folk culture, not only have a historical importance, but also passed through a highly contradictory and manylayered history of their own long before the modern period. Yet precisely in its concern with “marginal phenomena,” the ethnological view goes further. It helps engender a fresh historical sensitivity for the uniqueness, difference, and Otherness of historical phenomena, dimensions which tend to be obscured by the application of universalizing “passe-partout categories”33 (such as role, economic growth, bureaucracy). Based on her own work exploring new terrain in the history of folk culture and women’s history tapping ethnological approaches, Natalie Z. Davis has called these insights the quintessential contribution to historical understanding made possible by the social and cultural anthropological perspectives: Anthropology is not, then, some kind of higher vision of social reality to which historians should convert, but a sister discipline with increasingly close ties to our own. . . . Indeed, the impact of anthropology on my own historical reflection has been to reinforce my sense not of the changeless past, but of the varieties of human experience. There are sets of relationships that one is continually looking for, but evolutionary schemes do not necessarily hold. Markets do not always drive out gifts, centers do not always eliminate particular localities, and history does not always replace myth. Anthropology can widen the possibilities, can help us take off our blinders, and give us a new place from which to view the past and discover the strange and surprising in the familiar landscape of historical texts.34

One of the gains from the anthropological approach that has increasingly been accepted into the craft of the social historian is enhanced insight into the costs of modernization and industrialization. This perspective is relevant not just in looking at the countries of the third (and fourth) world; rather, there has been a sharpening of awareness and insight in particular when it comes to those groups, strata, and classes in various European societies themselves which were increasingly pauperized, ex-

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cluded, and often even deprived of their rights during the course of the secular upheavals of the sixteenth through nineteenth centuries. However, the example of deprivation of rights has also revealed that concomitant with the emergence of new forms of authority, new practices and traditions of resistance appeared, new ways of demanding and achieving justice and rights. Unilinear modes of viewing historical processes (as suggested by theories of modernization and industrialization) are thus shown to be specifically void of any validity. In any event, the interest in historical “losers” understood along these lines had consequences extending far beyond the history of the lower social orders.35 As Jürgen Kocka has pointed out,36 it has not always been possible to avoid the pitfall of a simple negative reversal in perspective: swinging away from the theory of modernization and toward a false romanticization of the past. Nevertheless, for the most part, ethnographic historians have been operating beyond such global and evolutionary ways of seeing the past. After all, more is at issue here than mere ways of seeing. The question is one of working out a viable alternative perspective. Without forgetting or underestimating transformations which were in fact “great,” however inadequately they are rendered by concepts such as “industrialization,” “modernization,” and the like, what is rejected is a resigned view that construes these (reified) concepts to be pseudosubjects of the historical process. Giving due recognition to the historical salience of material and authoritative constraints, the main issue for the alternative perspective is one of the problem of “agency,” as E. P. Thompson has called it.37 He proposed the term to address the connection between the experience of repression and the options for action among the groups, strata, cultures, and genders that had been pauperized, excluded, and deprived of their rights—and which were traditionally neglected by research. Of paramount importance here is the investigation of spheres of historical reality which—as shown by studies of modes of life and expression in folk culture, for example—were not only profoundly altered (and in part destroyed and overrun) by actual historical developments, but which, well down into the twentieth century, were also left in analytical limbo, systematically excluded from the experiential horizons of scholarship.38 Historians thus began to shift their attention to the “strangers,” the “others”—not in the so-called primitive societies, but in our own history. And in many respects, the history of everyday production and reproduction of experiences and modes of action turned out to be the “other” subject par excellence. A key problem emerges at the crux of the debate on the relationship between structure and action in the context of everyday life: whether, to what extent, and how the new fields of investigation facilitate the reconstitution of historical subjects—or rather, in

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what way the traditional questions about the historical subject can be newly formulated. The central questions of the old discussion in hermeneutics about the accessibility of subjective experience, understanding of meaning via texts, presented themselves anew—though now on the basis of a fundamentally altered position in the case of the historians. In the older hermeneutic tradition, cultural unity and the continuity of one and the same context of experience and transmission had been presumed to be the precondition for any understanding whatsoever. That unity and continuity could no longer be taken for granted within the new areas of research in social history. In this situation, the eye of the ethnographer, trained in the fine art of participant observation of societies outside the investigator’s own circle of life and culture, proved to be more helpful for the historian than the established procedures of his own professional craft. For hermeneutic historians the primary goal of their discipline had been the (re)appropriation, however critical, of an existing tradition—a tradition which, it was presumed, the historian and his object both shared. Such a procedure and its legitimation must fail to function, however, as soon as the historian is confronted by the historical other in a manner not encompassed by a “shared historical context,” to use a key hermeneutical term coined by Hans Georg Gadamer.39 Carlo Ginzburg has given pointed formulation to this new starting point of social history and the basic change in perspective it necessitates: The fundamental instrument is that of alienation, making strange, the ability to make the familiar alien—and not the reverse, as historians usually do. . . . Often one turns to the past with a purely retrospective projection, which knows no return and does not seek and see what is different—excessive identification! The old concept of Stokely Carmichael: Adam was black. On the contrary, one must pay attention to what is dissimilar. That is not easy.40

In view of such a constellation, anthropological ways of knowing could provide a fertile new perspective for research in social history. In any case, the specific participant-observational and interpretive approach of the ethnographer toward a strange culture and society is nonreflexive: it cannot refer back to that same framework of tradition from which the researcher himself comes. The field research paradigm thus offers a useful and needed corrective to those procedures in the humanities and social sciences, and especially in social history, which had been all too precipitate in reducing the alien to the familiar. Sometimes this reduction has come to pass via the element of anticipation entailed in systematictheoretical constructions and explanatory approaches, sometimes in the postulation of a hermeneutic presupposition—itself not further proble-

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matized—as a precondition for any understanding whatsoever. Social historians should also seriously consider the relevance for them of an insight expressed by the anthropologist James Boon precisely in reference to the mainstream tradition of hermeneutics and its legitimation via a specific understanding of history and culture: But in anthropology hermeneutic interpretation involves more than History (whether defined religiously or philosophically) pulling itself away from its own would-be presence and interpreters striving to obliterate the distance between the self and the lost. Anthropology offers a rich field of multiple languages and plural cultures. Again, a hermeneutics appropriate to plural cultures and histories brushes alongside negative dialectics [of the self-interpretation, self-exaggeration, and self-contradiction of individual cultures.— H. M.] whose nemesis is standardized (Enlightened) uniformity and whose circles or spirals of interpretation (versus explanation) are nothing if not bumpy. Any anthropological hermeneutics becomes—like anthropology’s social theory—a hermeneutics with a difference.41

The Limits of “Participant Observation” and the Meaning of “Thick Description” How is ethnographic participant observation, which entails a new direction in the problematic of understanding and interpretation, carried out? And what can it offer the social historian in the way of (possibly) serviceable cognitive perspectives? First of all, a warning is in order here against the romanticizing assumption that an interpretative approach which hugs the ground of experience, as in the practice of field anthropologists, can provide immediate access to the reality of an alien culture or society. Most ethnographers agree that empathetic participation cannot substitute for the work of understanding—a task that can be accomplished only by means of patient reconstruction and systematic observation. Participant observation, as Clifford Geertz,42 Kevin Dwyer,43 and others have indicated, is and remains an often fragmented and questioned effort to experience what is other, where meaning is frequently construed. And that experience of the other is based upon the initial recognition of a renunciation: “We are not . . . seeking either to become natives (a compromised word in any case) or to mimic them. Only romantics or spies would seem to find point in that.”44 And Geertz adds the question: “What happens to Verstehen, when Einfühlen disappears?”45 The anthropologist does not have immediate access to the experience

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of that other culture and its Otherness. For that reason, he remains limited to an indirect deciphering of the different culture and mode of life. He perceives cultural expressions of life and activities as socially produced “texts”; these texts open up vistas on a further and more diverse, “objectified” array of meanings lying over and beyond the inaccessible immediacy of individual intentions and actions. It is precisely this conception of symbolically structured utterances, actions, and modes of presentation as “text” that figures as a central presupposition of interpretive anthropology.46 Such an understanding makes it possible to discover the encompassing meaning-structures that come to the surface and are processed in cultural presentations and self-descriptions. Geertz puts it this way: “I have tried to get at this most intimate of notions not by imagining myself someone else, a rice peasant or a tribal sheikh, and then seeing what I thought, but by searching out and analyzing the symbolic forms—words, images, institutions, behaviors—in terms of which, in each place, people actually represented themselves to themselves and to one another.”47 Geertz points here to the particular interpretive dimension that resides in all cultural and social expressions. It has the status of a self-interpretation and self-exaggeration of the other culture and society and its social relations, both internally and to the outside. Especially when this interpretative dimension is articulated in spectacular modes of behavior and expressions, it can bring everyday experience—in a heightened form—to the level of presentation and explication. Thus, ritual constitutes and exposes cultural meanings, though without the individual participants always being fully aware (in our sense) of these meanings. This dimension of interpretation and self-explication—that is, this active and creative symbolic praxis—is a component present in all actions, in ritual and spectacular expressions as well as the most mundane everyday events, such as greeting, laughing, loving, or working. In order to come to proper terms with that dimension, the ethnographer must develop experience-near concepts from the perspectives of the actors themselves, while at the same time remaining aware that the problematic of the interpretive dimension of the other culture and society reaches further than just taking the point of view of one or several actors. Otherness presents an ongoing problem not just for the anthropologist as participant observer, but also for the social subjects in the culture and society being investigated. As J. Matthes has noted,48 their “interpretations” likewise refer to a “divided reality.” Such interpretations by the social subjects themselves are always confronted and intermingled with those segments of their social and cultural world that are (and will remain) alien and exterior to them, in spite of constant efforts to make sense of and appropriate such other and unknown elements.

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The paramount importance of “thick description” in ethnography49 has its origin and necessity in this binary problematic of Otherness. That problematic is one the participant-interpreting ethnographer must grapple with, but it is enhanced due to the fact that the cultural reality investigated is itself also affected by it. “Thick description” results from the necessity to keep in full mind, and in the most comprehensive manner possible—in the form of a descriptive reconstruction—anything that is new, strange, unknown, and hard to interpret in the cultural “texts” to be explored. This approach clashes with certain basic assumptions of the so-called hypothesis-testing50 brand of research, where what is alien and other is all too quickly reduced to the familiar. Yet thick description so conceived certainly does not imply that the ethnographer must abandon systematic interpretation, although it does mark a conscious refusal to awaken the (false) impression of unambiguity, coherence, and the finality of an interpretive “grasp.” This requires a conscious effort to distance oneself from the customary procedure of tracing the observed modes of behavior and cultural and symbolic expressions back to one purported unitary sense. Thick description thus betokens humility; at the same time, it implies being methodologically more sophisticated—and more open to taking risks. The abiding simultaneity of distance and proximity between the observer and the “living” texts of the culture under observation leave the ethnographer with only one option: reading these texts “over the shoulders of those to whom they properly belong.”51 Thick description must take this state of affairs into due account, out of respect for the interpretation and self-explication of the other culture. The “challenge from the other”52 also bears with it the obligation on the part of the ethnographer to select correspondingly “open” modes of representation, ones that will do justice to the dialogic situation of his or her fieldwork and to the “objective interpretation”53 that the other culture itself produces. Therefore, thick description also means above all else establishing the most complete possible text—with its multiplicity and hierarchy of structured meanings—and keeping it open for later (and other) interpretations. Ethnography in the form of thick description is thus not coincidentally the principal mode for presenting ethnological investigations. But it would be mistaken to believe that this ethnography therefore has no theory, or that for Geertz and other ethnographers the “theory of the native subjects” is uncritically confused with the interpretations of the ethnologist himself. However, it appears that anthropologists have a different understanding of theory—or better, of systematic interpretation—than that represented in a Weberian position. In the latter, the separation of theory and

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reality remains crucial, no matter how “object-oriented” the theories formulated may be.54 Geertz has a different basic view of the place theory occupies in ethnographic analysis: “[I]t is not its own master. As it is unseverable from the immediacies thick description presents, its freedom to shape itself in terms of its internal logic is rather limited. What generality it contrives to achieve grows out of the delicacy of its distinctions, not the sweep of its abstractions.”55

Examples and Methodological Implications of Anthropological Historiography At this juncture, one can ask what tangible gain in knowledge the social historian may derive from the awareness of the field-research concepts of the anthropologist, his insights, presuppositions, and limitations. Without any claim to exhaustiveness, at least a few points can be mentioned here. To begin with, there is the more precise vision that the historian can develop for the “informal logic of actual life”56 and its shaping by sociocultural meanings. The historian William Sewell, for example, regards this as the “deepest and most powerful message of cultural anthropology,”57 one which should be fruitfully applied to social history. It reveals not only that certain kinds of activities can be analyzed to reveal popular beliefs and preconceptions but that the whole of social life, from such symbolically elaborate practices as religious festivals to such seemingly matter-of-fact activities as building houses or raising crops, is culturally shaped. “Ideas” or “beliefs” are not limited to certain classes of activities or to certain classes of people. They are woven into the everyday life of ordinary people; “all experience,” as Clifford Geertz puts it, “is construed experience.”58

But the cognitive gain for social history that can be derived from utilizing ways of seeing appropriated from social and cultural anthropology goes beyond such generalizing statements. Culture and cultural expressions, considered from the standpoint of their own special interpretative dimension, cannot simply be decoded as a system of norms, symbols, and values that are “present and given,” constant and unchanging, in virtually all mundane everyday and noneveryday relations. On the contrary: precisely in the light of perspectives from social and cultural anthropology, they must be explored as an element and medium of the active representation and construction of experiences and social relations, and their transformation. Cultural modes and forms of expression are thus present as a historical motor force, an element both shaping the expectations, modes

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of action, and their consequences in the historical “event” and also operative as factors in the “structuration” of the social world of class, authority, economic relations, and their historical transformation. Such a perspective has implications for an understanding of the content of social history. It shifts historical everyday life to the front and center of scrutiny as a field of tension where action, experience, structure, and history are mediated within cultural modes of life that have been molded along lines specific to class and stratum and determined by regional and local factors. Of course, these modes of life are not self-contained, static microworlds; rather, they are always oriented toward the outside as well, and influenced by external factors—often indeed even dominated by them. This complex also involves what Lutz Niethammer has termed the “constant play” of the forces of ‘‘determination by the self and the other.” Consequently, what is involved here is not primarily a view of the history of everyday life in the form of the history of the routine automatic functioning of a materially objective culture, in the sense and presentation of Fernand Braudel, for example.59 Rather, the focus here is on everyday life as the culturally shaped context for action and interpretation of historical “realities of life” specific to a given social stratum, though that contexture has always been (and continues to be) decisively influenced and molded by materially objective living conditions and changes in those conditions. Quite clearly, the aim here is not to push ahead in accordance with the romanticizing and nostalgic slogan “small is beautiful”—that is, to reconstruct a subarea of history and then pass this off as being the whole of history. This latter practice has been rightfully criticized by Jürgen Kocka in an evaluation of certain studies and approaches in the history of everyday life.60 The presumed limitation of alltagsgeschichte to the “microhistorical broom cupboard” as alleged by H.-U. Wehler61 fails to grasp the intention proposed here of expanded horizons, even though microhistorical procedures are serviceable as an important and fundamental point of departure. Rather, the goal is the reconstruction of the “inner side” of processes of change and transformation affecting the total society; as a rule, such processes are described only from the outside by a centrist perspective on history, and then declared to be objective necessities in the order of events. To quote a phrase by Raphael Samuel, what is important is to “identify the faces in the crowd.” Such an approach must pay careful attention to the meanings and structures of the multifaceted relations between these “faces,” as well as the more encompassing social-historical fields for action and conflict which are molded by (and in turn shape) these relations. But what should be the point of departure in respect to content and method? For a history of everyday life oriented in terms of social and

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cultural anthropology, it would appear to be senseless to proceed starting from the historical factors, aggregates, and subareas such as “authority,” “economy,” and “culture”—and their hypostatization as separate elements of the historical process. More important for such a historiography of Alltag is the attempt to reveal the cultural and social “construction,” “structuration,” and changes in authority and economy as manifest in everyday circumstances and modes of life. Examples of recent studies based on an explicitly historical-anthropological approach can serve to highlight the fruitfulness of this perspective: Rhys Isaac, in an extremely interesting work, has not only pointed out the dynamic-dramatic role played by cultural interpretations of the self and others, including the “objective interpretation” of value concepts and social-moral metaphors, but has also utilized them as a guidepost and perspective for orientation. With their help, he illuminates the process of transformation and structural change in American provincial colonial society at the time of the American Revolution. Isaac’s methodology grew out of the very nature of the material, so to speak. He reconstructed the “transformation of Virginia” from 1740 to 1790 out of a large number of small episodes, using “thick descriptions” closely based on the sources.62 The American Revolution in Virginia is re-presented as a process of cultural and religious transformation in an emerging class society. In the course of that process, the social and cultural hegemony of a hereditary, aristocratic planter gentry came under mounting challenge by a popular movement of religious revival. This challenge forced the planter gentry to abandon its old-style, patriotic republicanism. The gentry took over the leadership of a belligerent patriotic movement that was not afraid to enter into an alliance with “wild” trappers and backwoodsmen who had settled at the edge of “civilization.” In the end, the gentry was able to salvage a portion of its traditional power, but only at the expense of acceptance of the Revolution and the fundamental changes in cultural and political values which it had effected.63 Isaac presents an instructive exemplum of ethnographic historiography, a study which was explicitly written based on the adoption of this methodological approach, and includes an account of the method employed.64 There are also allied studies which explore the problem of the historical dynamics of cultures on the basis of their interpretations of themselves and others—their “representations” for themselves and others. These investigations examine that problem in those spheres where it is manifested in the most extreme form, namely, in situations and events of precolonial and colonial confrontation between explorers, conquerors, traders, colonial and company officials, industrialists (new style and old) on the one hand, and the peoples of the third and fourth worlds on the other. Anthropologists and historians are equally called upon to

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renounce the traditional perspective of the “missionary in the rowboat”65 and—in the manner proposed by Marshall Sahlins66—to bring our inherited concept of history “to an explosion.” He himself has given an example in a short study of the curious circumstances and meaning of the death of one of the “classic” explorers of the eighteenth century, Captain James Cook, who was murdered by natives on a beach in Hawaii on February 14, 1779.67 It would be superficial to attribute Cook’s death to the theft of ritual objects by the English and their use as firewood on the English ships—in short, to the deprecation of the other foreign “culture” by European “explorers.” Rather, Cook’s death came to pass in the historical completion and fulfillment of a mythical historical expectation by the inhabitants of Hawaii. As an essential part of their annual ritual renewal, the Hawaiians alternated between worship of the the peaceful agrarian god Lono and the usurpatory cannibalistic god Ku. Upon arrival, Cook was taken to be an incarnation of the god Lono, and was received and honored as such. But at the same time, his end as a god was predetermined by the mythological historical expectation. His significance as a temporary incarnation of the peaceful god, and the nonpeaceful interpretation which he and his men themselves attributed to this “significance,” led almost inexorably to his final end.68 But this “event” was not a closed chapter, and had structural consequences that went much further.69 Not only did Cook’s bones become a desirable manna-relic for the inhabitants of Hawaii—even more important was another development: the internal adoption of the representation of his English explorer persona, with its commercial attributes, within Hawaiian culture. As an “acculturation” of a segment of the Hawaiian elite, this internalization had important consequences, especially for certain specific changes in the makeup of class rule on the island. The “Englishness” of the Hawaiian ruling class that was established in this way outlasted even the subsequent penetration of American commercial capital in the nineteenth century. Down to the present day, there is still a small Union Jack in the upper left corner of the Hawaiian flag. The interpretive power of such studies extends beyond the particular concrete case, the typicality or untypicality of the situation being investigated, as Sahlins himself points out: For here, in the clash of cultural understandings and interests, both change and resistance to change are themselves historic issues. People are criticizing each other. Besides, their different interpretations of the same events also criticize each other, and so allow us a proper sense of the cultural relativity of the event and the responses to it. Still, all these processes are occurring in the same general way within any society, independently of radical differences in culture [as manifested and dealt with in cultural confrontation—

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H. M.], so long as actors with partially distinct concepts and projects relate their actions to each other—and to a world that may prove refractory to the understandings of any and all concerned.70

With his reference to the constraints of the external “refractory world,” which codetermine every cultural confrontation and all reciprocal interpretations, Sahlins is here deflecting a misunderstanding that his own “culturalist” position has in some respects encouraged.71 Cultural interpretation, including the interpretation of self and others as engaged in by historical subjects, should not be separated from what people do— or do to each other. But above all, it cannot be divorced from what is done to them (by others) or imposed upon them by force. Such an “objective interpretation” of interpretations must also be taken into account in historical-ethnographic studies. Studies of this kind should therefore always include an examination of the circumstances of life, work, and authority in and under which persons move and act, and from whose vantage they bring their interpretations to bear on each other. Sidney Mintz, one of the most interesting practitioners of a historically oriented anthropology in the United States, quite rightly warns against the shortcomings lurking in a culturalist-structuralist interpretation of cultural meanings and manners of expressions: I don’t think meanings inhere in substances naturally or inevitably. Rather, I believe that meanings arise out of use, as people use substances in social relationships. Outside forces often determine what is available to be endowed with meaning. If the users themselves do not so much determine what is available to be used as add meaning to what is available, what does that say about meaning? At what point does the prerogative to bestow meaning move from the consumers to the sellers? Or could it be that the power to bestow meaning always accompanies the power to determine availabilities? What do such questions—and their answers—mean for our understanding of the operation of modern society, and for our understanding of freedom and individualism?72

It is precisely this limitation and determination of sociocultural needs and meanings by the constraints of “other worlds” which Mintz has made the object of study in an investigation of “sweetness and power.”73 His main thesis is that the meaning of sweet and sweetness in contemporary society cannot be separated from the history of the colonial production and marketing of sugar as a commodity in the transitional period to the modern age. Sweet taste also has a history, but cannot be comprehended as the history of a cultural phenomenon observed in isolation; rather, it can be made intelligible only on the basis of its most important vehicle in the modern period—sugar. This history of sugar and the spread

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of its consumption in daily life is an important component of the relations of power, authority, and exploitation during this era. Already in the medieval and precolonial period, transmitted by the Arab Islamic world, sugar was known and valued in Europe. It was used then principally as a medicine and spice, and certainly did not dominate the realm of sweet taste; at that juncture, honey, for example, was also an important source of sweetness. Moreover, sweetness in that period had not yet achieved its present-day preeminence, and was just one of many tastes. In addition, the use of sugar was limited to the upper class. Sugar was considered to be a luxury item enjoyed by royalty, patricians, and the nobility. The colonial production of sugar in the slave-based plantation economies of Central and South America led to a significant expansion of sugar consumption and the corresponding development and “internalization” of sweetness as a taste. This was the origin of the bitter side of the global history of sugar, which, as Mintz demonstrates, fostered the modern might of sweetness.74 Mintz also shows that the power of sweetness in early modern history and in the contemporary world cannot be accounted for based solely on the production side. It is impossible to separate that power from the lasting impact which the demand for sugar, constantly on the rise since the seventeenth century, had on the middle classes in Europe, and especially the lower classes there. Beginning at that time, sugar became a muchdesired sweetener, initially as an additive to hot drinks such as tea and coffee. Sugar served as an important “proletarian hunger-killer” that “sweetened” a drab everyday life increasingly determined by worsening conditions of nutrition and an intensified pace and regimen of discipline at work. In this way, sugar not only brought about a shift in taste preferences, but a lasting change in habits of nutrition and mode of life.75 One of the intriguing aspects of Mintz’s study involves the taste-historical process alluded to here. Mintz regards sugar, and the taste for sweetness based on it, as pacesetters—indeed, a world-historical motor force— which paved the way for the “fast food” phenomenon of the present and the “industrialization of nutrition” outside the home. Sugar initially contributed to integrating the working population into the relations of production, time-economy, and work discipline of capitalist industrialization; then, as a pacemaker, it went on to promote and push forward the industrializing of eating habits and of the mode of life more generally. The first sweetened cup of hot tea to be drunk by an English worker was a significant historical event, because it prefigured the transformation of an entire society, a total remaking of its economic and social basis. We must struggle to understand fully the consequences of that and kindred events, for

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upon them was erected an entirely different conception of the relationship between producers and consumers, of the meaning of work, of the definition of self, of the nature of things. What commodities are, and what commodities mean, would thereafter be forever different. And for that same reason, what persons are, and what being a person means, changed accordingly. In understanding the relationship between commodity and person, we unearth anew the history of ourselves.76

The special charm of Mintz’s “anthropology of modern life” illustrated using the example of the history of sugar and sweet taste is that the study is essentially designed as an exploration in historical anthropology. It attempts to show the contemporary importance of sugar as a commodity and—now as before—the main vehicle of sweet taste in reference to its origin, rooted in global historical conditions generated by the specific interconnections between the metropolitan centers and their colonies in the early modern period. During that transitional age of mercantilism, conditions arose, mentalities formed, meanings crystallized; modified taste preferences developed, along with new modes of nutrition and action which persisted after the end of that era and have been preserved down into the present as the legacy of sweet taste. Yet Mintz’s work as an anthropologist is not only interesting from the point of view of its content. It also calls for confronting the “other” and highly political aspects of a history of everyday life that is only seemingly familiar; in so doing, Mintz cautions, one should not rush to any premature utilization of the self-interpretations of one’s own culture and mode of life as an interpretive criterion. Thus, the study is more than just a successful example of how to present the inseparable connections between the history of everyday life and world history since the advent of the world capitalist system. Rather, it goes further, showing that the strange and other, often violent dimensions of history on a “grand” scale are not far removed from the history of everyday life—frequently, in fact, they are its forgotten and repressed portion.

Anthropologists Discover History These examples, to which numerous others could be added,77 make it clear that precisely at the moment when historians are turning to anthropology, anthropologists are in some ways already indeed far ahead of the historians. This is also true when it comes to the recognition of historicity itself as a theme. Anthropologists are in the process of discovering history not just as a necessary analytical mode of observation for the researcher, say in the form of an enhanced awareness of the importance of time and

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temporality in the formation of ethnographic categories78—but as historicity, historical experience, the construction and practice of history and memory in the societies they themselves investigate.79 In part this sensitivity to new formulations of problems derives from the actual real-historical process itself, the transformation of the so-called primitive societies which has been brought about by developments such as the capitalist world economy, the formation of new states, and a new international division of labor. Just as these upheavals violently disrupted established situations of life, so they called into question the ahistorical syntheses of structural functionalism. The notion of “timeless primitives” necessarily had to be abandoned as soon as it was discovered that the anthropologists’ own societies had themselves developed only via the impact of these same processes and radical changes which have fundamentally altered the shape of the world over the course of the last five hundred years. The traditional “cult units” of anthropology—the tribe, village, and kinship group—were radically called into question as ahistorical categories by this discovery, in particular when conceived as total social entities isolated from their surrounding world and environment.80 As the anthropologist Eric Wolf has shown in a comprehensive study,81 even these societies did not come into being until the period of the expansion of trade and capitalism in the modern world system. However, this development did not take place in terms of the kind of close dependency and one-sided determination often assumed by many historians, such as Immanuel Wallerstein82 and André Gunder Frank,83 to name only two. What is brought out by Eric Wolf, and even more so in other studies, is the independent and particular history and experience of the peoples and societies of the third world. That historical experience is presented as a mixture of resistance and collaboration, differing considerably depending on the individual case—a mixture introduced into the process of colonial conquest by the European masters and the forces of developing capitalism.84 Yet it retained a uniqueness and originality—largely due likewise to the precolonial and noncolonial history of these societies.85 But quite apart from increasing insights into the differentiation, multipolarity, and contradictory nature of these actual “real-historical” impulses, serious doubts were raised about the concept of structure itself, a notion that had been a basic assumption of English and French anthropology down into the 1960s and 1970s. More recently, the discussion in anthropology has concentrated on categories such as “praxis,” “habitus,” and strategy,” in conjunction with the idea of a never-ending reconstitution and transformation of society.86 They appear to be more satisfactory analytical terms with which to investigate actions and their contradictory positioning in more comprehensive social and cultural contexts. They also allow one to develop a more “precise view” than did the

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older cultural anthropological key concepts of the “moral community” or of institutionalized value systems embedded in kinship networks. This mode of seeing, however, harbors the danger of failing to properly address the multiple layers and contradictions of the historical process: “strategic action” can easily be reduced to “manipulation,” and it specifically fails to do justice to a historically influential form of “praxis” that reaches beyond the immediate circumstances. Finally, the salience of “habitus” can also be viewed as grounded in “general human needs” which specifically lie beyond the realm of historical changeability and any constitution that is socially and culturally specific. Pierre Bourdieu is certainly not free from elements of such a static way of seeing. Yet precisely at this point, a radicalized hermeneutic problem comes in a new way into its own. The recognition of what is “alien” and “other,” even when guided by concepts such as “strategy” and “habitus,” still runs the risk of being misunderstood in terms of a model ultimately derived from the conception of Western individualism. As indicated in the context addressed here, the problem of the connection between subjective experience on the one hand and objective structures on the other, between praxis and the social validity of values, between perceptions and meanings, between individuals and institutions, cannot be separated from questions of class formation, the dialectic of historical change, and processes of social, cultural, and economic transformation. The “crisis in anthropology” thus brings anthropologists, whether they want to or not, to the necessity for adopting a historical perspective.

In Conclusion Possibilities for a fruitful dialogue between the two disciplines have emerged from the matrix of these particular questions within the new social history and social and cultural anthropology. For both, it is imperative that they leave behind the dichotomies which have counterposed the objective, material, structural, or institutional factors to the subjective, cultural, symbolic, or emotional ones. Of especial import is the fact that the historical concept of the individual and person—as the principal referential categories in the production and assignment of meaning and sense—have revealed themselves to be a false starting point for historical knowledge and for knowledge in social and cultural anthropology.87 If the category of “sense and meaning” has taken on a new dimension, then it is as a publicly produced or signified sense (bedeuteter Sinn) which is generated through the reciprocal, but at the same time asymmetrical, play of social relations. This also implies that the social constitution of the individual must constantly be viewed as part of a social process. To see

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the individual as socially constituted in this way means that this process is always played out within the contradictions and conflicts of the society in question, and that these contradictions and multiple layers also extend into the subject.88 Formulated more pointedly, it can be said that the arrogation of meanings and cultural self-interpretation in action is necessary and possible only within social processes that are constituted on the based of class, ridden with contradictions, and in any event multilayered and complex. It follows not only that meanings are produced socially, but equally that social and even economic relations are produced or terminated in the cultural sphere of meaning—as they appear, for example, in such forms as the ritual of greeting. If the “subject” is to make an appearance on the stage of history and anthropology once again, then it will only be within this context of the social production of meaning—within this complex process whereby a selection is made (and must be made) from the common store of connotations, values and, symbols—that is, from a “culture.” It would be mistaken to assume that this process takes place on a neutral field under conditions of equal abilities and opportunities. Rather, what is at issue here is the ongoing struggle for meaning(s). That conflict is constantly present in the context of social relations—relations which at the same time are constituted by that very struggle. Reciprocity, dependency, and resistance—and their intermixtures—are thus not “structurally given.” They become reality only within this struggle for meaning(s) as it is waged in and between historical subjects—that is, individuals, groups, classes, and cultures.

Notes I would like to thank Doris Bachmann-Medick, David Cohen, Alf Lüdtke, and David Sabean for their useful comments. They contributed generously to the arguments made here, but not to any shortcomings that are also present. The text is a revised version of a paper by the same title first published in German in Geschichte und Gesellschaft 10 (1984): 295–319 and in English translation in Comparative Studies in Society and History 29 (1987): 76–98. 1. B. S. Cohn, “Anthropology and History: The State of the Play,” Comparative Studies in Society and History 22 (1980): 198–221; reprinted in An Anthropologist among the Historians and Other Essays (New Delhi, 1987), 18–50. 2. Cohn, “Anthropology and History,” 199. 3. F. Braudel, Civilisation matérielle, économie et capitalisme (XVe–XVIIIe siècle), 3 vols. (Paris, 1980); German translation: Sozialgeschichte des 15.–18. Jahrhunderts, 3 vols. (Munich, 1985–86). He has elaborated a more pointed juxtaposition of “unhistorical” everyday life and historically dynamic mercantilism in a series of lectures: La dynamique du capitalisme (Paris, 1985).

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4. F. Braudel, La Méditerranée et le monde méditérrannéen à l’èpoque de Philippe II, 2 vols., vol. 1 (Paris, 1979), 30. 5. On the self-image of historical social science, see H.-U. Wehler, “Geschichtswissenschaft heute,” in Stichworte zur “Geistigen Situation der Zeit,” ed. J. Habermas, vol. 2 (Frankfurt am Main, 1979), 742ff.; English translation: “Historiography in Germany Today,” in Observations on “The Spiritual Situation of the Age”: Contemporary German Perspectives, ed. J. Habermas (Cambridge, Mass., 1984), 221–59; Wehler’s arguments against the position sketched below can be found in “Königsweg zu neuen Ufern oder Irrgarten der Illusionen? Die westdeutsche Alltagsgeschichte: Geschichte ‘von innen’ und ‘von unten,’ ” in “Geschichte von unten—Geschichte von innen”: Kontroversen um die Alltagsgeschichte, ed. F. J. Brüggemeier and J. Kocka (Hagen [FernUniversität], 1985), 17–47. Despite justified criticism of specific details, Wehler’s polemic remarks miss the mark of the main arguments presented here. This is due particularly to the fact that he rejects the notion of the need to question a Eurocentric conception of history. That stance is fundamental to the ethnological perspective and calls into serious question both the content of historiography and the methodological approaches, theories, and concepts chosen; Wehler’s argumentation beats an all too hasty and affirmative retreat to a “conscious defense of the unparalleled accomplishments of the West” (p. 45); J. Kocka, Sozialgeschichte: Begriff, Entwicklung, Probleme (Göttingen, 1986), 67ff., esp. 152ff. What Kocka has written after 1982 reflects a certain differentiation and further development in views that he still espoused in the first edition of Sozialgeschichte (1977). This is especially true in respect to his adoption of a concept of culture deriving from anthropology and folklore/folklife (Volkskunde) studies, and his plea for a “cultural-historical expansion of social history” (Sozialgeschichte, 2d ed., 152ff.). Yet these content-related modifications in the understanding of the nature of social history do not appear to have effected any basic changes in the methodological and theoretical orientation of the field to date. Now as before, the systematic social scientists, with their “array of methods, concepts, models, and theories,” continue to provide the key paradigm for research and knowledge in social history—no matter how flexible the argumentation with which such a paradigm is applied in historical studies. See Kocka, “Theorien in der Geschichtswissenschaft,” in Kocka et al., Theoriedebatte und Geschichtsunterricht (Paderborn, 1982), 10ff., and “Zurück zur Erzählung? Plädoyer für historische Argumentation,” Geschichte und Gesellschaft 10 (1984): 395–408. For a critique of West German approaches in historical social science and the history of society (whose depiction here naturally must remain incomplete, based only on the authors mentioned), see G. Roche, “Un mouvement des nouvelles Annales en RFA?” Revue d’Allemagne 11 (1979) 405–20; on international developments in social history, though without any consideration of the West German current of historische Sozialwissenschaft, see L. Stone, “History and the Social Sciences in the Twentieth Century,” in his The Past and the Present (London, 1981), 16ff. 6. L. Stone, “The Revival of Narrative: Reflections on a New Old History,” Past and Present, no. 85 (1979): 3–24; reprinted in his The Past and the Present, 74–96. 7. On this, see E. J. Hobsbawm, “The Revival of Narrative: Some Com-

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ments,” Past and Present, no. 86 (1980): 3–8, and especially P. Abrams, “History, Sociology, Historical Sociology,” Past and Present, no. 87 (1980): 3–16; see also Hobsbawm, Sociological History (London, 1983). 8. On this, Kocka, “Theorien in der Geschichtswissenschaft,” 18, 22, but see also n. 6 above; Wehler, “Geschichtswissenschaft,” 737. 9. Abrams, “History, Sociology, Historical Sociology,” 5. 10. On this mode of seeing, note Wehler, “Geschichtswissenschaft,” 743. 11. See Roche, “Un mouvement,” 407, 414ff. “On the other side of the Rhine, historians have not as yet turned toward the production of the imaginary. . . . In reading Kocka, and Heinrich August Winkler as well, you have a little the impression as though mentalities and ideologies were totalities that surge on intact from period to period or generation to generation” (pp. 407, 416). 12. Abrams, “History, Sociology, Historical Sociology,” 3ff. 13. Stone, “History and the Social Sciences,” 31f. 14. J. Chesneaux, Du passé fassons table rase? A propos de l’histoire des historiens (Paris, 1976), 8. 15. A useful though somewhat incomplete survey through 1980 is D. Gaunt, Memoir on History and Anthropology (Stockholm, 1982); B. S. Cohn, “Anthropology and History: The State of the Play” and “Anthropology and History in the 1980s: Toward a Rapprochement,” Journal of Interdisciplinary History 12, no. 2 (Autumn 1981): 227–52; N. Z. Davis, “Anthropology and History in the 1980s: The Possibilities of the Past,” ibid., 267–75; from reciprocal exchanges of ideas among an international working group of historians and social anthropologists, which has been in existence since 1978 and originated in an initiative by Robert Berdahl, Alf Lüdtke, David Sabean, Gerald Sider, and myself, the following have appeared: R. Berdahl et al., Klassen und Kultur: Sozialanthropologische Perspektiven in der Geschichtsschreibung (Frankfurt am Main, 1982); H. Medick and D. Sabean, eds., Interest and Emotion: Essays on the Study of Family and Kinship (Cambridge, 1984); German translation: Emotionen und materielle Interessen: Sozialanthropologische und historische Beiträge zur Familienforschung (Göttingen, 1984); A. Lüdtke, ed., Herrschaft als soziale Praxis: Sozialanthropologische und historische Studien (Göttingen, 1989). 16. On this, see the literature cited in n. 69 below. 17. E. E. Evans-Pritchard, Anthropology and History (Manchester, 1961), 20. 18. M. Sahlins, “Other Times, Other Customs: the Anthropology of History,” American Anthropologist 85 (1983): 534; reprinted in his Islands of History (Chicago, 1983), 32–72. 19. O. Köhler, “Versuch einer ‘Historischen Anthropologie,’ ” Saeculum 25 (1974): 129–246, presents a summary of discussions and ideas in a circle that coalesced at the beginning of the 1970s around the periodical Saeculum: Jahrbuch für Universalgeschichte. On the continuation of this circle, out of which in the meantime the Freiburg Institut für Historische Anthropologie developed, see J. Martin, “Das Institut für Historische Anthropologie,” Saeculum 33 (1982): 375–80. For a noteworthy and intriguing approach, though later not continued, see T. Nipperdey, “Die anthropologische Dimension der Geschichtswissenschaft” (1967), in his Gesellschaft, Kultur, Theorie: Gesammelte Aufsätze zur Neueren Geschichte (Göttingen, 1976), 33–57, 418–19 nn.; characteristic of the

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predominant tendency at that time (1967) to underestimate the productiveness of anthropological perspectives is Nipperdey’s reference to Evans-Pritchard’s book Anthropology and History in the very first footnote of the essay, with the comment: “The lecture by E. E. Evans-Pritchard . . . from the standpoint of an anthropologist, contains nothing new for our subject” (p. 418). 20. This is most evident in Köhler’s report on discussions in the Saeculum circle, “Versuch.” 21. J. Martin, in a characterization of the specific approach of the Saeculum circle, from which the Freiburg Institut für Historische Anthropologie developed in 1975, in “Probleme historisch-sozialanthropologischer Forschung,” in Historische Anthropologie, ed. H. Süssmuth (Göttingen, 1985), 43. 22. On this, see the volume edited by Süssmuth, ibid., especially his introduction, “Geschichte und Anthropologie. Wege zur Erforschung des Menschen,” 5– 18; Martin, “Probleme historisch-sozialanthropologischer Forschung,” ibid.; A. Nitschke, “Fragestellungen der Historischen Anthropologie. Erläutert an Untersuchungen zur Geschichte der Kindheit und Jugend,” ibid., 32–41; on the work of Nitschke and his remarkable school of historical behavioral science, the best survey is his Historische Verhaltensforschung: Analysen gesellschaftlicher Verhaltensweisen—Ein Arbeitsbuch (Stuttgart, 1981). 23. This is shown by the more recent volumes of the series Historische Anthropologie issued by the Freiburg Institute, esp. J. Martin and A. Nitschke, eds., Zur Sozialgeschichte der Kindheit (Freiburg-Munich, 1986), and E. W. Müller, ed., Geschlechtsreife und Legitimation zur Zeugung (Freiburg and Munich, 1985), as well as J. Martin and R. Zoepfel, eds., Aufgaben, Rollen und Räume von Frau und Mann, 2 vols. (Freiburg and Munich, 1987). 24. W. Lepenies, “Geschichte und Anthropologie. Zur wissenschaftlichen Einschätzung eines aktuellen Disziplinkontakts,” Geschichte und Gesellschaft 1 (1975): 338; see also his “Probleme einer historischen Anthropologie,” in Historische Sozialwissenschaft, ed. R. Rürup (Göttingen, 1977), 126–59. 25. See esp. A. E. Imhof, “Historische Demographie,” in Sozialgeschichte in Deutschland, ed. W. Schieder and V. Sellin, vol. 2 (Göttingen, 1986), 32–63, and compare with his Einführung in die historische Demographie (Munich, 1976) and the superb presentation of his new research approach in Die verlorenen Welten: Alltagsbewältigung durch unsere Vorfahren und weshalb wir uns heute so schwer damit tun (Munich, 1984). Imhof’s more recent work focuses increasingly on a comparison of the experiences and modes of life (and survival) of European societies during the early modern transitional period with experiences—partially similar, in part fundamentally different—in present-day societies outside Europe; see his Die Lebenszeit: Vom aufgeschobenen Tod und von der Kunst des Lebens (Munich, 1988) and his Von der unsicheren zur sicheren Lebenszeit: Fünf historisch-demographische Studien (Darmstadt, 1988). Mitterauer’s recent work is impressive, especially as a result of its judicious application of comparative perspectives; see his Ledige Mütter: Zur Geschichte unehelicher Geburten in Europa (Munich, 1983) and his Sozialgeschichte der Jugend (Frankfurt am Main, 1986). 26. The following may be taken as exemplary: N. Z. Davis, Society and Culture in Early Modern France (London, 1975); on her motives for turning to anthropology, see the interesting interview “Politics, Progeny and French History:

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An Interview with Natalie Zemon Davis,” Radical History Review 24 (1980): 129ff., as well as her “Anthropology and History”; C. Ginzburg, The Cheese and the Worms: The Cosmos of a Sixteenth-Century Miller (Baltimore, 1980); J. C. Schmidt, Le Saint Levrier: Guinefort, guérisseur d’enfants depuis le IIIe siècle (Paris, 1979). 27. See G. Bock, “Historische Frauenforschung: Fragestellungen und Perspektiven,” in Frauen suchen ihre Geschichte, ed. K. Hausen (Munich, 1983), 22–60, esp. 35ff., and, in particular, G. Pomata, “La storia delle donne: una questione di confine,” Il mondo contemporaneo (Florence) 10, no. 2 (1983): 1434–69; reprinted in part as “Die Geschichte der Frauen zwischen Anthropologie und Biologie,” Feministische Studien 2, no. 2 (1983): 113–27; N. Z. Davis, Frauen und Gesellschaft am Beginn der Neuzeit: Studien über Familie, Religion und die Wandlungsfähigkeit des sozialen Körpers (Berlin, 1986). A good example of how anthropological ways of seeing and questioning can stimulate historical research can be found in a study on the history of the female body and the way doctors have viewed it; see Barbara Duden, Geschichte unter der Haut: Ein Eisenacher Arzt und seine Patientinnen um 1730 (Stuttgart, 1987). 28. N. Z. Davis, “ ‘Women’s History’ in Transition: The European Case,” Feminist Studies 3 (Spring/Summer 1976): 83–103; the interesting and controversial study by I. Illich, Gender (New York, 1982), is impressive by dint of its ethnohistorical wealth of information and the questioning of an “epistemologically sexist central perspective” that it makes possible (p. 227, n. 91). That has validity despite the shortcomings in Illich’s presentation of the relations of power and domination obtaining between the sexes, and especially his theses, historically indefensible, of a supposed “fragmented gender” in the early modern transitional era or even of the contradictionless, economic “unisex”—a notion as simplistic as it is nonsensical—which he postulates for industrial-capitalist consumer societies. 29. See remarks in H. Medick and D. Sabean, “Interest and Emotion in Family and Kinship Studies: A Critique of Social History and Anthropology,” in Interest and Emotion, ed. Medick and Sabean, 9–27. 30. On this, see the controversy between Detlev Peukert and Alf Lüdtke: D. Peukert, “Arbeiteralltag—Mode und Methode,” in Arbeiteralltag in Stadt und Land: Neue Wege der Geschichtsschreibung, ed. H. Haumann (Das Argument, Sonderband 94) (Berlin, 1982), 8–39; A. Lüdtke, “ ‘Kolonisierung der Lebenswelten’—oder: Geschichte als Einbahnstraße?” Das Argument, no. 140 (1983): 536–41, and the reply by Peukert, “Glanz und Elend der ‘Bartwichserei,’ ” ibid., 542–49. D. Peukert appears to be laboring under a mistaken notion of ethnology (Völkerkunde), or at least one no longer tenable today, when he utilizes the latter’s colonialist legacy (which Völkerkunde also now questions) in arguing for a limitation and strict regulation of the history of everyday life in terms of “historical social science” (p. 34). This is especially obvious when he speaks about an “incompatability between scientific knowledge and everyday experience” (p. 24) and later tries to support his arguments by referring to an insoluble “paradox” between the “methods of analysis and presentation” in historical social science— that must follow respectively the “requirements of reason”—and the “symbolic self-interpretations” of “life worlds which are decaying.” Indeed, he does not think that the latter can be represented in the history of everyday life (p. 34). In his reply, Lüdtke deals only indirectly with the difficult problem of translating the

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history of everyday life, i.e., of finding appropriate ways to express and represent the Otherness of everyday experiences and modes of behavior; on the other hand, he specifically addresses that problematic in his “Cash, Coffee-Breaks, HorsePlay: ‘Eigensinn’ and Politics among Factory Workers in Germany around 1900,” in Workers and Industrialization, ed. M. Hanagan and C. Stephenson (London, 1984), 65–95; see also Lüdtke in this volume, passim. 31. A classic example of anthropologically inspired labor history, comparable in some respects for the United States (if not for the white industrial proletariat) to E. P. Thompson’s monumental The Making of the English Working Class (1968) is the late Herbert Gutman, The Black Family in Slavery and Freedom 1750–1925 (Oxford, 1976). 32. See p. 42 above. 33. R. Needham, “Polythetic Classification: Convergence and Consequence,” Man 10 (1975): 349–69. 34. Davis, “Anthropology and History,” 274f. 35. On this, see remarks by Herbert Kisch, impressive both methodologically and in autobiographical terms, in his “Die Textilgewerbe in Schlesien und im Rheinland: eine vergleichende Studie zur Industrialisierung,” in P. Kriedte et al., Industrialisierung vor der Industrialisierung: Gewerbliche Warenproduktion auf dem Land in der Formationsperiode des Kapitalismus (Göttingen, 1977), 376f. 36. J. Kocka, “Klassen oder Kultur? Durchbrüche oder Sackgassen in der Arbeitergeschichte,” Merkur 36 (1982): 962f. 37. E. P. Thompson, “The Poverty of Theory,” in his The Poverty of Theory and Other Essays (London, 1978), 280. 38. Norbert Schindler, in a critical survey of the research literature, has cut a broad path providing access to these hidden contexts of action and experience; see his “Spuren in die Geschichte der ‘anderen’ Zivilisation. Probleme und Perspektiven einer historischen Volkskulturforschung,” in Volkskultur: Zur Wiederbelebung des vergessenen Alltags (16.–20. Jahrhundert), ed. N. Schindler and R. van Dülmen (Frankfurt am Main, 1984), 13–77. 39. “Wirkungsgeschichtlicher Zusammenhang”; see H. G. Gadamer, Wahrheit und Methode: Grundzüge einer philosophischen Hermeneutik (Tübingen, 1960), 284ff. 40. C. Ginzburg, “Geschichte und Geschichten. Über Archive, Marlene Dietrich und die Lust an der Geschichte,” in his Spurensicherungen: Über verborgene Geschichte, Kunst und soziales Gedächtnis (Berlin, 1983), 22f. 41. J. A. Boon, Other Tribes, Other Scribes: Symbolic Anthropology in the Comparative Study of Cultures, Histories, Religions and Texts (Cambridge, 1983), 234. 42. Especially relevant for the problems discussed below are C. Geertz, “Thick Description: Toward an Interpretive Theory of Culture,” in his The Interpretation of Cultures: Selected Essays (New York, 1973), 3–30, and “ ‘From the Native’s Point of View’: On the Nature of Anthropological Understanding,” in his Local Knowledge: Further Essays in Interpretive Anthropology (New York, 1983), 55–70. 43. K. Dwyer, Moroccan Dialogues: Anthropology in Question (Baltimore, 1982), esp. pt. 2, “On the Dialogic of Anthropology,” 253–88. 44. Geertz, “Thick Description,” 13.

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45. Geertz, “ ‘From the Native’s Point of View,’” 56. The German terms appear in the English original. 46. C. Geertz, “ ‘Deep Play’: Notes on the Balinese Cockfight,” in his The Interpretation of Cultures, 448–449. This conception of sociocultural forms and modes of action as “texts” was first elaborated in explicit terms by Paul Ricoeur in connection with his critique of the excessively narrow notion of text common in previous hermeneutical theory; see esp. his “Der Text als Modell: hermeneutisches Verstehen,” in Seminar: Die Hermeneutik und die Wissenschaften, ed. H. G. Gadamer and G. Boehm (Frankfurt am Main, 1978), 83–117, and P. Ricoeur, De L’Interprétation: Essai Sur Freud (Paris, 1965), 45–63. 47. Geertz, “ ‘From the Native’s Point of View,’ ” 58. 48. J. Matthes, “Die Soziologen und ihre Wirklichkeit. Anmerkungen zum Wirklichkeitsverhältnis der Soziologie,” in Entzauberte Wissenschaft: Zur Relativität und Geltung soziologischer Forschung (Soziale Welt, Sonderband 3) (Göttingen, 1985), 49–64. 49. With this critique of concepts of interpretation and understanding that are centered on the interpreter, I follow ideas put forward by Clifford Geertz, but am at the same time modifying them utilizing further insights to be found in Boon, Other Tribes, Dwyer, Moroccan Dialogues, and Matthes (see n. 48 above). The most interesting critique to date of Geertz’s overly rigid restriction of his interpretive analysis of culture to an interpretation of texts—in the form of a critical reading of one of Geertz’s key and still seminal essays—can be found in a paper by W. Roseberry, “Balinese Cockfights and the Seduction of Anthropology,” Social Research 49 (1982): 1013–28. 50. This convincing argument of J. Matthes (“Die Soziologen”), involving a critique of the corresponding tradition of research in sociology, makes the insights of interpretive anthropology sketched here fruitful for application to “reconstructive social research.” 51. Geertz, “ ‘Deep Play,’ ” 452. 52. Dwyer, Moroccan Dialogues, 285. 53. H. Turk, “Die Wirklichkeit der Gleichnisse. Überlegungen zum Problem der objektiven Interpretation am Beispiel Kafkas,” Poetica 8 (1976): 208–25. 54. J. Kocka, “Gegenstandsbezogene Theorien in der Geschichtswissenschaft,” in Theorien in der Praxis des Historikers, ed. J. Kocka (Geschichte und Gesellschaft, Sonderheft 3) (Göttingen, 1977), 178–88. 55. Geertz, “Thick Description,” 24f. 56. Ibid., 17. 57. W. H. Sewell, Work and Revolution in France: The Language of Labor from the Old Regime to 1848 (Cambridge, 1980), 10. 58. Sewell, Work, 10. 59. See p. 42 above and n. 4. 60. J. Kocka, “Historisch-anthropologische Fragestellungen—ein Defizit der Historischen Sozialwissenschaft?” in Süssmuth, ed., Historische Anthropologie, 78. 61. Wehler, “Königsweg,” 36. 62. R. Isaac, The Transformation of Virginia 1740–1790 (Chapel Hill, 1982). 63. Isaac pays little attention to the circumstance that the process of transfor-

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mation he describes is anchored in everyday contexts of action and in conditions of material culture. An interesting supplementary perspective, likewise based on anthropological approaches, can be found in the work of T. H. Breen, which deals with changes in consumption habits and their politicization in societies in North America before and during the War of Independence, especially “ ‘Baubles of Britain’: The American and Consumer Revolutions of the Eighteenth Century,” Past and Present, no. 119 (1988): 73–104; Breen, Tobacco Culture: The Mentality of the Great Tobacco Planters on the Eve of the Revolution (Princeton, 1985). 64. See esp. the final chapter, “A Discourse on Method: Action, Structure and Meaning,” in Issac, The Transformation, 323–57. 65. See pp. 41f. above. 66. See p. 45 above. 67. M. Sahlins, Historical Metaphors and Mythical Realities: Structure in the Early History of the Sandwich Islands Kingdom (Ann Arbor, 1981). Sahlins has elaborated on the themes dealt with in this study, both theoretically and in historical subject matter, in his Islands of History (Chicago, 1985). 68. Sahlins, Historical Metaphors, 9ff. 69. Ibid., 28ff. 70. Ibid., 68 (my emphasis). 71. These culturalist elements are rightly criticized by D. Groh in a discussion of one of Sahlin’s theoretical-systematic essays (Culture and Practical Reason [Chicago, 1976]), although without taking into account his broader anthropological interpretation of history; see “Ethnologie als Universalwissenschaft,” Merkur 36 (1982): 1217–25. 72. S. Mintz, Sweetness and Power: The Place of Sugar in Modern History (New York, 1985), 29f., on Mintz’s historically oriented understanding of culture, which owes its dialectical thrust specifically to his view of the contradiction and incongruence between cultural modes of life and modes of experience, on the one hand, and social relations and material conditions of life, on the other; see his “Culture: An Anthropological View,” Yale Review (1982): 499–512, esp. 505ff. 73. See n. 72 above; for the impact of this book, see esp. the interdisciplinary symposium in Food and Foodways 2 no. 2, (1987): 107–97, as well as my essay “Süsse und bittere Seiten der Weltgeschichte des Zuckers,” Geschichtswerkstatt 12 (1987): 8–19. 74. Mintz, Sweetness, 19–73. 75. Ibid., 74–150. 76. Ibid., 214. 77. Some notable examples: a pioneering work is R. Rosaldo, Ilongot Headhunting, 1883–1974: A Study in Society and History (Stanford, 1980). The various studies by Gerald Sider on Newfoundland fishing villages in the eighteenth to twentieth centuries have dealt in an exemplary way with the role of everyday culture and everyday ritual in the process of social class formation, as well as in the process of the genesis, reproduction, and transformation of a regional system of society, economy, and authority; see especially his Culture and Class in Anthropology and History: A Newfoundland Illustration (Cambridge, 1986); see also “The Ties that Bind: Culture and Agriculture, Property and Propriety in the Newfoundland Village Fishery,” Social History 5 (1980): 1–39, and “Family Fun

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in Starve Harbour: Custom, History and Confrontation in Village Newfoundland,” in Interest and Emotion, ed. Medick and Sabean, 340–70. Stimulating, particularly due to their consistent comparative perspective, are studies by Jack Goody, including his The Development of the Family and Marriage in Europe (Cambridge, 1983); also his Cooking, Cuisine and Class: A Study in Comparative Sociology (Cambridge, 1982) and his magisterial trilogy on the relation between the introduction of writing and domination: The Domestication of the Savage Mind (Cambridge, 1977); The Logic of Writing and the Organization of Society (Cambridge, 1986); The Interface between the Written and the Oral (Cambridge, 1987). 78. On this, see J. Fabian, Time and the Other: How Anthropology Makes Its Object (New York, 1983). 79. A pioneering study is R. Price, First-Time: The Historical Vision of an Afro-American People (Baltimore, 1983). 80. E. Wolf, Europe and the People without History (Berkeley, 1982), 3–19. 81. Ibid., passim. 82. I. Wallerstein, The Modern World System I: Capitalist Agriculture and the Origins of the European World-Economy in the Sixteenth Century (New York, 1974); and his The Modern World System II: Mercantilism and the Consolidation of the European World-Economy, 1600–1750 (New York, 1980); The Modern World System III: The Second Era of Great Expansion of the Capitalist WorldEconomy, 1730–1840s (New York, 1989). 83. A. G. Frank, World Accumulation, 1492–1789 (New York, 1978). 84. See, for example, W. Peukert, Der atlantische Sklavenhandel von Dahomey 1740–1797: Wirtschaftsanthropologie und Sozialgeschichte (Wiesbaden, 1978), for the African kingdom of Dahomey in the eighteenth century, with a historical critique of the Eurocentric concept of history known as the so-called Atlantic theory and, in particular, a view critical of K. Polyani’s studies; on Peukert, see the thoughtful review by M. Johnson, “Polyani, Peukert and the Political Economy of Dahomey, Journal of African History 21 (1980): 395–98; for a “related” and yet totally different society—that of the Morones, the black slaves of the former Dutch colony of Surinam, who escaped in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries into the tropical rain forests, and thus to freedom—see Price, First-Time, a work that develops an impressive and novel manner of presentation effectively utilizing the principle of thick description. 85. This point is stressed for Africa in a critical review of the state of research on African social history; see D. Cohen, “Doing Social History from Pim’s Doorway,” in Reliving the Past: The Worlds of Social History, ed. O. Zunz (Chapel Hill, 1984), 191–235. 86. On this, see P. Bourdieu, Entwurf einer Theorie der Praxis auf der ethnologischen Grundlage der kabylischen Gesellschaft (Frankfurt am Main, 1976; originally published as Esquisse d’une Théorie de la Pratique [Geneva, 1972]); on the concept of “habitus,” see the Glossary in this volume. 87. See Geertz, “ ‘From the Native’s Point of View’”: “The Western conception of the person as a bounded, unique, more or less integrated motivational and cognitive universe, a dynamic center of awareness, emotion, judgment, and action organized into a distinctive whole and set contrastively both against other such

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wholes and against its social and natural background, is, however incorrigible it may seem to us, a rather peculiar idea within the context of the world’s cultures. Rather than attempting to place the experience of others within the framework of such a conception, which is what the extolled ‘empathy’ in fact usually comes down to, understanding them demands setting that conception aside and seeing their experiences within the framework of their own idea of what selfhood is” (p. 59). 88. These reflections go back to a discussion with Rhys Isaac and David Sabean. Person and individual as historical “constructs” of a specific regional social discourse and of changing social relations determined by sovereign regional power and the village community are a central focus in the Württemberg “histories” of D. Sabean, Power in the Blood: Village Discourse in Early Modern Germany (Cambridge, 1984).

3 MENTALITIES, IDEOLOGIES, DISCOURSES O N T H E “T H I R D L E V E L” A S A T H E M E I N SOCIAL-HISTORICAL RESEARCH Peter Schöttler

[W]e very much need something to occupy the conceptual space between the history of ideas, defined more narrowly, and social history, in order to avoid having to choose between an intellectual history with the society left out and a social history with the thought left out.1 —(Peter Burke)

We dissect not with the knife, but with concepts.2 —(J. Lacan)

Preliminary Remarks

O

NE OF the weak points of recent research on social history is that its structural-analytical approach has focused primarily on economic and social dimensions.3 In contrast, less attention has been paid to the various forms of consciousness, habits of thought, world views, ideologies, and so on—in short, what Ernest Labrousse has termed the “third level”4 over against “economy” and “society”; in fact, not only are they examined less intensively, but they are often handled inadequately in methodological and theoretical terms. Thus, for example, even after a lengthy discourse on social structures and classes, one finds that the development of political “ideas” and “ideologies” is generally dealt

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with from the standpoint of the “history of ideas.” There is a virtually total lack of a “structural history of the subjective plane,” that is, a history of the complex and material forms that “consciousness” takes on (keeping in mind that in reality, the material involved generally is totally unconscious). One might suggest that the dialectic of “base and superstructure,” now subject to nearly universal ridicule and considered by most an obsolete concept, has returned to the scene in a new guise, almost like a sentiment too hastily repressed, namely, as this symptomatic disdain for the autonomous nature and special character of the subjective—in a reductionist form that misconceives “superstructure” to be nothing more than a “smog-like haze” (H.-U. Wehler) hanging over the solid base.5 Yet my intention here is not to plead once more the case for giving “subjectivity” greater consideration, say in the form of a “complement” to structural history or a shift in perspective in the direction of a “subjectoriented historiography” (Michael Vester) that seeks to place “human beings” and their “experiences” squarely in the center of attention.6 In fact, I think positing an alternative of “objectivism” versus “subjectivism” is a quite disastrous approach, since it obstructs the posing of the problem in materialistic terms—namely, as a rational analysis of the material forms of “consciousness”—erecting instead a barrier of mutually complementary one-sided attributions and “evidence.” In actuality, one could demonstrate that it is not only studies framed in terms of a “bird’s-eye view” of the whole ensemble of society which assume a generalized universal conditio humana, unspecific in its societal features, when it comes to subjectivity: a kind of Mr. or Ms. Everyman. Indeed, even (or should I say specifically?) that current of “microhistories” focusing on everyday life and so-called small, ordinary people—the life of the kleine Leute—that has become more popular in recent years seems based on such an assumption. It suggests the possibility of immediate insight into—or intimate understanding of—the minds and emotions of human subjects, this despite the fact we are well aware, at least since Freud, that there is no such thing as an intentional “subject” endowed with a clear-sighted consciousness and in harmony with itself. Of course, such a critique deserves to be properly elaborated in detail and justified, which would amount to an essay in its own right. Instead, what I propose to do here is to concentrate on a discussion of several theoretical premises and possible alternatives for a social-historical analysis of that “third level.” My intention, referring in the main to the French literature, is to sketch and discuss three directions in research that can be designated by the key terms mentality, ideology, and discourse—and whose differences and interrelations can perhaps lend themselves to productive application.7

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Mentalities The genesis and most important features of what has come to be called the “history of mentality” have been so often sketched and summarized, especially in recent years, that there is no need here for a detailed exposition on the topic.8 I will limit myself to a few basic points, and then examine more closely two problems frequently associated with the application of the concept of mentality in social history. In the history of History, the approach focusing on the history of mentality is closely bound up with the emergence and development of the Annales school in France.9 Already during the 1920s to the 1940s, the founding fathers of the periodical Annales, Marc Bloch and Lucien Febvre, were—within the framework of their concept of histoire sociale totale—calling for scholars to turn away from the previously dominant questions that had occupied intellectual and cultural historians, and were themselves pioneering such a shift in their own research.10 This change in perspective was marked by the new concepts outillage mental (mental equipment, tools) and mentalité. Inquiry no longer centered on the “spirit of the times” (in which the latter sums up and explicates itself in good Hegelian fashion), but rather sought to discover the dimensions of historical social formations that were considered to be “mental” or “intellectual.” To be more precise, the focus was no longer on the special, separate plane of the esprit and the spirituel, but rather the everyday plane of the mental in an anthropological and psychological sense.11 This then was the first time, at least in the historical sciences, that the “third level” was specifically scrutinized as a theme without reducing it to “ideas” or to the “social.” Since that period, the history of mentalities in France has evolved into a number of subcurrents and become differentiated in ways that are in part quite controversial. The array of its research objects and methods ranges from family and childhood history to the history of habits of hygiene, clothing, and sexual behavior, from the history of reading to historical semantics and the history of optical and acoustic sensations.12 As Michel Vovelle has observed, the history of mentalities today has become a “discipline boulimique” (a gluttonous discipline),13 constantly incorporating new fields of research.14 For that reason, it is difficult to find or formulate a single unified and or even highly precise definition of its key concept, mentality. Two quotes can serve to circumscribe and suggest the direction recent discussion has been moving in. Robert Mandrou, in a programmatic encyclopedia article published in 1971, noted: The history of mentalities aims at reconstructing the patterns of behavior, expressive forms and modes of silence into which worldviews and collective

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sensibilities are translated. The basic elements of such research are concepts and images, myths and values recognized or tolerated by groups or the society as a whole, and which form the content of collective psychologies.15

Jacques Le Goff, in an essay published in the seminal anthology Faire de l’histoire, stated: The plane of the history of mentalities is that of everyday life and of automatism, that is, what escapes individual subjects in history because it reveals the impersonal content of their thinking—what Caesar and the lowest foot soldier in his legions, Saint Louis and the peasant in his domains, Christopher Columbus and the deckhand on his caravels all share in common. The history of mentalities is to the history of ideas as is the history of material culture to economic history.16

Yet Le Goff himself has stressed that the great success enjoyed by the concept of mentality is bound up with its relative vagueness, indeed “imprecision.”17 Despite its claim to having effected a shift in analytical perspective, it can, as a global concept, always facilitate a kind of belated co-optation and reincorporation of the traditional concepts such as “worldview,” “superstructure,” and “spirit of the times.” It is therefore not surprising that conservative critics have not been the only ones to denounce the new concept as a “semantic slight of hand.”18 Even respected social historians who support the change in perspective promoted by the Annales as such have, based on the concrete practice of their own research, been careful to note the shortcomings and pitfalls of the mentality concept and its application to date. As one representative example,19 I would like to single out the critique voiced by Carlo Ginzburg, who has raised two basic objections: first of all, the concept of mentality in Bloch and Febvre is associated with a general tendency to “reduce every historical problem to psychological problems.”20 Secondly, he contends that the history of mentality has a pronounced “class-neutral” character, so that it leads to an underestimation and neglect of lower-class cultures of resistance. This can be illustrated by a comparison of Febvre’s study on Rabelais with that by Mikhail Bakhtin.21 Thus, Ginzburg argues, there tends to be a danger that “beyond the theorizations about collective mentality . . . the traditional history of ideas” could resurface.22 In point of fact, the history-of-mentalities approach (and it is not alone in this regard) is beset with a problem related to psychology that has far-reaching consequences. Ginzburg correctly points out that both Bloch and Febvre were fascinated by psychology (Febvre stated that “psychology is the key to history”). Moreover, they borrowed their concept of mentality in the main from Lucien Lévy-Bruhl (“our master,” as Febvre

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called him), who espoused the thesis in the early 1920s that there was an irreconcilable opposition between “primitive mentality” and rational thought.23 The approaches developed by the psychologists Charles Blondel and Henri Wallon also exercised a formative influence on their thinking.24 The gravity of the theoretical problem becomes evident especially when the pioneer works by Bloch and Febvre are examined in the light of more recent discussions on psychoanalysis. Marc Bloch’s pathfinding study on the “thaumaturgic kings” offers a vivid and striking illustration of the difficulties that the (early) history of mentality had with psychoanalytical theory. This study deals with the miraculous healing powers of French and English kings, abilities that were attested and “believed in” down to the nineteenth century. In the monograph, completed in 1923, Bloch sees himself confronted with the question of whether a “psychotherapeutic explanation,” as he terms it, might be called for in trying to explicate this belief in healing: “the laying on of hands would thus be a kind of psychotherapy, and the kings would unawares be some sort of Charcot.”25 But he goes on to reject this tack of interpretation, even commenting on it in an ironic way. Bloch notes that the approach he designates by reference to the name of Charcot has long since fallen into disrepute among scientific experts, and such phenomena of “hysteria” are due “either to simulation or disturbances that had no nervous origin.”26 Bloch states that he discussed the problem with several doctors and finally came to the conclusion that it would be tantamount to “physiological heresy” to explain the healing of scrofula by medieval kings as the result of a therapeutic “suggestion.”27 Thus, in the end, Bloch has no other solution but to resort to the argument that the royal healings were phenomena of “collective illusion,” indeed of “collective error.”28 If one bears in mind the extraordinarily innovative character of this investigation as a whole, with its focus on the role of magic, and the fact that Bloch had an excellent knowledge of the German scientific literature, it must astound a present-day observer to realize that the work of Sigmund Freud was apparently unknown even to this avant-garde historian, and that for him the name Charcot was reminiscent at best of obscure hypnotic healing practices. Bloch thus remained caught on the horns of the classic rationalist dilemma: either it was something organic and physiological, a genuine illness and a genuine healing—or it was pure and unadulterated illusion, nothing but an error, a belief in miracles, and perhaps even some sort of deception. The psychoanalyst Michel Plon has commented critically on this theoretical deficiency: “The bold historian sees himself confronted here with a phenomenon whose roots and manifestations form a central aspect of political theory, namely, the question

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of the dual character of power and its extensions in the form of a permanent transition from the political to the religious. But he misses the exit that is theoretically possible. . . .”29 That means of egress would have consisted in “going beyond Charcot, without destroying his accomplishment,” and entering onto another path: the avenue leading to the “recognition of the special character of the psychological dimension—that is, the Freudian path, which takes into account the unconscious and a regimen of desire that cannot be reduced to that of need.”30 It is seldom noted, Plon argues, “that it is precisely this path which tacitly attests the duality of power by distinguishing between function and person. By isolating the dimension of transfer—which also entailed a distinction between the real, private person and the official person, invested with the emblems of power and thus experienced as someone protected and endowed with a power, such as that of . . . healing—Freud was able by this means to find a way out of the infernal trap left to us by the choice between nothing but simulation or disease.”31 With a sense of astonishment mingled with a note of curiosity, Plon speaks about a “kind of paralysis” that apparently afflicts historians as soon as they venture to grapple with the problem of the unconscious. The rationalist impetus, he contends, induces a mode of distancing that occasionally even assumes the form of defiant “negation.”32 Thus, for example, Jacques Le Goff recently reiterated that “the history of mentalities has . . . no need whatsoever for psychoanalysis. People should not try to frighten us with a bugbear.”33 You can also read this to mean: psychoanalysis is evidently still perceived to be a kind of “bugbear,” a beast at best avoided. The caricaturization and banalization that Freudian theory has been subjected to for decades have become a pretext to ignore the unconscious,34 because, as Michel de Certeau has shown,35 psychoanalytical questions could serve to undermine not only the methodological instruments of history as a science, but its institutional status and the ideological impact of historical discourse. Yet even today, this intellectual “resistance” (in the Freudian sense) still largely remains a matter that has not yet been adequately worked through36 or overcome in actual practice (aside from the American current of “psychohistory,” whose special situation will not be dealt with here). In the context of the history of mentalities, the studies by Alain Besançon on Russian history constitute a special exception, but he has since parted ways with psychoanalytical approaches.37 Other exceptions to the prevailing rule are Jeanne Favret-Saada’s investigation of the belief in witches in the Mayenne area38 and the exploratory study by Philippe Boutry and Jacques Nassif attempting to unravel a case of religious prophecy during the reign of Louis XVIII by combining social-historical research and psychoanalytical hypotheses.39 However, their experiment

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has also met with strong opposition: apparently the old “bogey” is still alive and kicking.40 In contrast, the studies by Philippe Ariès enjoyed a far greater degree of success quite early on. In his work, the concept of the “collective unconscious” plays a central role, and there is an explicit and positive receptive openness toward psychoanalysis in its Jungian variant. For Ariès, “the great tidal currents that set the collective state of mind into motion— attitudes toward life and death—are dependent on more secret and better hidden motive powers lying at the boundary between the biological and cultural dimension, i.e., the collective unconscious.”41 As Michel Vovelle observed, this constitutes a fundamental change in the concept of the history of mentalities: “From an approach that still bore the features of a history of cultures or of rational thought, there has been a shift to the more secret (as Ariès might put it) realm of collective attitudes that are expressed in acts, gestures or even dreams—unconscious reflections of deeply rooted ideas.”42 In the context of the present paper, we cannot explore the question whether and to what extent the concept of the “collective unconscious” and its associated “archetypes” represents an advance for psychoanalysis—or a conservative revision.43 Ariès anyway is not concerned with orthodox Jungian views, but rather is in search of a convenient way to designate mental structures and their manner of functioning as he understands them. He asks, “what is the collective unconscious?” and replies: “Presumably it should be better called the collective nonconscious. Collective because it is common to an entire society at a specific point in time. Nonconscious, since contemporaries take little or no notice of it. It is self-evident and part of the unalterable givens of nature. It encompasses ideas handed down over generations or that lie suspended in the air. Commonplaces, rules of behavior and moral codes, conformities or prohibitions, permitted, forced or forbidden expressions of feelings and phantasms.”44 A more extreme formulation elsewhere contends that the collective unconscious “forms the elementary psychological tendencies such as self-assurance or the desire for power—or, conversely, the feeling of community and solidarity.”45 Ariès, with this brand of “depth psychology,” certainly does not stand alone within the Annales current.46 Fernand Braudel has also operated on occasion with the concept of the collective unconscious. Thus, for example, at the beginning of the 1960s he wrote: “The reactions of a society to the events of the moment . . . correspond less to logic or selfish interest than to the unformulated, yes often inexpressible commandment welling up from the collective unconscious.”47 Objections have frequently been raised to this reversion to a “residual” irrational element.48 Using the example of alchemical texts, Barbara

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Obrist has demonstrated the speculative and misleading nature of the Jungian theory of archetypes.49 Michel Vovelle has been particularly outspoken as a critic of Ariès. He has alleged that this species of the history of mentalities was bobbing like an “air cushion” on “timeless and antagonistic” waters: “one can follow the play of Eros and Thanatos from Baldung Grien . . . to the Marquis de Sade.”50 Vovelle argues that this amounts in practice to a multiple reduction: on the basis of diverse yet impressionistic sources, the discourse of the elites is extrapolated and accorded a special privilege, while the religious and cultural ideas of the lower classes are more or less ignored. In addition, the history of mentalities undergoes a kind of amputation at both extremities: severed by the power of ideologies on one side, and by the influence of the various modes of production, social hierarchies, and demographic and epidemiological conditions on the other. This, claims Vovelle, gives rise to the conservative image of a humankind moved by “timeless subterranean forces,” and ultimately defined by a suprahistorical “general trend.”51 Vovelle’s critique is directed against reducing the history of mentality to the determination of mental archetypes and their historical variants. Yet his criticism is also aimed at any tendency for those mentalities to take on an independent existence vis-à-vis the contradictions of social structure—that is, what Le Goff has labeled the “myth of the abstract collective subject.”52 This brings us to the Ginzburg’s second point of criticism, namely, the problem of the class relation or class neutrality of mentalities. It is well known that the concept of mentality was not formulated in the framework of a Marxist conception of history; indeed, one could maintain it was developed to a certain degree specifically to counter a vulgar version of Marxist theory which postulated the total determination of “superstructure” by the economic “base.” Yet an intriguing question is whether the concept of mentality is not indeed quite compatible with the problematic of class—though, needless to say, without slipping back into economic reductionism. I believe Ginzburg’s criticism here falls short of its mark. After all, does the second volume of Bloch’s magnum opus, La Société féodale, not bear the title Les classes et le gouvernement des hommes? In other words: despite the rejection of the concept of class that was the dominant view in the guild of professional historians at the time, Bloch chose to speak about “de facto” class structures specifically in respect to medieval society—and then related these to the prevailing “mental atmosphere.”53 The concept of class (or class struggle) can be shown to be present and influential in the thinking of other Annales historians as well, such as Duby, Mandrou, Le Goff, and Braudel.54 Of course, one would have to

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examine the relationship between the use of the term and Marx’s theoretical concept.55 Yet there is a decisive and new aspect in contrast to the Stalinist brand of Marxism-Leninism that dominated the interwar and postwar periods: the fact that the collective phenomena called “mentalities” cannot be related—that is, reduced—to a specific class. The concept of mentality in this sense opens up possibilities for investigating the forms of everyday consciousness and behavior as an array of realities which, though existing within a social force-field of classes, enter into a dynamic interrelation with this field that must analyzed anew in each case. Tastes and feelings, opinions and dreams are not the immediate expression of a so-called class standpoint. In order to properly determine their particular linkage (or delinking) with economic long-term developments, economic cycles, social tensions, and the like, they must initially be taken for what they are. Any attempt to “derive” them in the framework of some philosophy of history is doomed to failure. It cannot be denied that another danger may rear its head, namely, the risk of losing sight of the nonmental dimensions of reality. Fernand Braudel himself expressed some critical objections to the Annales of the 1970s along these lines: Too bad that my successors [at the head of the Annales] prefer to investigate mentalities and neglect economic life! For my part, I would never investigate mentalities without raising questions about all the rest. In that regard, I agree with Eric Hobsbawm: there is no autonomous history of mentalities; mentalities are always connected with everything else. I believe that my successors haven’t sufficiently grasped this fact. They awaken the impression as if they were leaving the economic soil that makes possible our connection with our Marxist colleagues to the extent they turn toward mentalities. How could I, who espouse the idea of a globalizing history [l’histoire globalisante], declare myself in agreement with that?56

One could sum this up by saying that the problem of the relations between mentalities, modes of production, and structures of society continues to be controversial within the Annales school itself—and controversial means that the question remains open. Upon closer examination, the terrain reveals a number of quite different currents. Quite recently, for example, André Burguière, one of the directors of the periodical, pointed to the substantial differences between the concepts of mentality held by Bloch and Febvre. It is his thesis that the “new paradigm” of an anthropologically oriented history of mentalities, which includes an explicit reception of Freud and Marx (in contrast with earlier periods), owes a far greater debt to Bloch’s “sociologism” than to Febvre’s “existentialism.” Burguière contends that while Febvre was primarily interested in a psychological history of consciousness, Bloch abandoned all notions of any

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history of ideas or consciousness. Particularly in his book on feudal society, he presented analyses “which today one would call in part historical anthropology, and in part history of ideology.”57 I would now like to interrupt this discussion of mentality and turn to the concept of ideology.

Ideologies One might assume that the concept of ideology is a familiar theoretical notion. The literature on this topic fills whole libraries, and there are also a number of studies dealing with the history of the concept.58 Nonetheless, there is no binding and accepted definition of the term. Not only have the words ideology and ideological been discredited politically as a result of their distortion in the linguistic usage of the media in both East and West.59 Theoretically as well, it is disputed whether they are operational expressions. Michel Foucault, for example, notes: “For three reasons, the concept ‘ideology’ seems to me to have only a limited utility. First of all, it is always nolens volens in a virtual opposition to something like truth. . . . Secondly, the concept ‘ideology’ necessarily always makes reference to something like a subject. And third, ideology is always relegated to second place in relation to what functions for it as a base, an economic or material determinant, etc.”60 Paul Veyne went one step further in this criticism in regard to historiography, calling for the radical abandonment of the term: “Despite all the holy texts, people should decide never to ever use this word again.”61 In contrast, especially in the 1970s, many voices were heard pleading for greater utilization of this concept specifically in the field of history. Geoff Eley, for example, saw it as holding out a possibility for overcoming the fuzziness of sociological concepts such as “socialization” and “social control,” and even the traditional concept of “class consciousness.”62 Using the journal Geschichte und Gesellschaft as an example, Georges Roche criticized the lack of approaches to problems in terms of ideology theory or a theory of mentality.63 However, it should be pointed out that here and in similar pleas by Georges Duby, Régine Robin, or Michel Vovelle,64 critics had in mind a concept of ideology that differs considerably from the traditional problematic of ideology, especially in its “German,” “ideology-critical” variant, and remains little known in the Federal Republic. The background to that concept was formed in particular by Louis Althusser’s new reading of Marx, published in 1965 as Pour Marx and Lire le Capital.65 Social scientists and historians were particularly receptive to the theory developed there pertaining to the various modes of

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production and their structural linkage within the framework of social formations (Gesellschaftsformationen).66 In Althusser’s plea for a nonHegelian concept of “historical time,” it was also possible to discern certain parallels to the theses the Annales had espoused regarding the relative autonomy of the various levels of society and temporality.67 Since Althusser was interested both in the opposition between science and ideology and the problem of a nonreductionist theory of superstructure, the concept of ideology played a central role in his thinking.68 Yet it should be emphasized that his definition is quite different from the use of the term in Marx and Engels.69 In Althusser’s case, he was not concerned here with a “false consciousness of the world” (as Marx wrote in 1844) or with a “conscious being” (bewußtes Sein) turned topsy-turvy (as stated in the Deutsche Ideologie) or a mystifying effect of commodity production (in the sense of his chapter on fetishism in Das Kapital). Nor was the concept of “ideological powers” (ideologische Mächte) used by the late Engels sufficient for Althusser’s needs. Although he took pains to appear externally as an “orthodox” Marxist and always referred to the so-called classic texts, his real referents were Spinoza and Freud, both of whom he tried to integrate into a new Marxist materialism. Over against the narcissism of the workers’ movement as it is paradigmatically articulated in the category of “class consciousness,” he counterposed another thesis. In Althusser’s view, it is impossible to speak about a more or less clear “mass thinking” (Engels) in the sense of a quasi-Cartesian collective cogito; rather, individuals are always caught up in an imaginary relation to their real conditions of existence, and it is this imaginary relation which largely structures their behavior and thought. The special features of this concept of ideology deserve to be spelled out more precisely in order to better understand its impact, and to compare it with the concept of mentality. For the sake of brevity, I will summarize it in four theses, though it should be borne in mind that Althusser’s position has changed over the years. Thesis 1: Ideology, in general, has its own materiality. This thesis aims to criticize the prevailing conception that ideologies involve nothing but “ideational,” “spiritual,” nonmaterial emanations of an economic base, and are, in the extreme case, even just a mere “semblance” (Schein), a mystifying “trick.” The traditional reading of the base-superstructure metaphor, in which material reality is “down below” and its ideational reflex is “up above” (as in Genesis: “the spirit . . . hovered over the face of the waters”), is overturned. In its stead, there is a call for the concrete investigation of ideologies using categories such as form of praxis, ritual, and apparatus. Thesis 2: Ideology represents the imaginary relation of individuals to their real conditions of existence. Althusser makes use here of the psycho-

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analytical category of the imaginary in order to move beyond the traditional understanding of ideology as “reversal” (Verkehrung), “alienated consciousness,” and the like. He is no longer concerned with a “distorted” conception of reality, but rather with the circumstance that this distortion occurs itself within an imaginary relation which seizes hold of individuals and penetrates their being. Thesis 3: Ideology interpellates individuals as “subjects.” Althusser here attacks what he regards as the central position of bourgeois ideology, namely, the assumption of a free and intentional subject, a homo rationalis, juridicus et oeconomicus. The unfragmented identity of consciousness as experienced by subjects is not constitutive by any way or means; it is not a causa sui, but rather always the product of a process of the ideological formation of the subject—a process which then disappears in an imaginary way in its result—the self-certainty of the subject. Recalling the baron who pulled himself by his own hair out of the swamp, Michel Pêcheux has spoken in this connection about a “Munchhausen effect.”70 Thesis 4: Ideology has no history. This thesis also makes reference to Freud, for whom the “unconscious” was “eternal,” so to speak. In Althusser’s thought, it has the additional strategic function of rejecting the notion that ideology is only a temporary phenomenon that will disappear with the overcoming of commodity production.71 Conversely, this “omnihistorical” existence of ideology does not mean to imply that the various historical ideologies did not have their own history (as Marx and Engels in fact believed in the Deutsche Ideologie!). Rather, it follows from the thesis on materiality that ideologies are not merely “decals,” as it were, of the economic base, but must be analyzed in each case in their relative autonomy. Althusser’s theses have remained controversial down to the present day. Their apodictic, at times dogmatic formulation, evidently designed to conceal truths considered subversive inside the communist party under a cloak of orthodoxy, obscured the unsolved problems and made critical reception and revision more difficult. Nonetheless, Althusser’s writings were recognized by many readers as a radical reckoning with traditional variants of Marxism, and they often experienced his ideas as a veritable intellectual liberation.72 Thus, the renaissance of the concept of ideology introduced by Althusser—which largely corresponds to the objections formulated by Foucault73—has had a variegated impact in the social sciences and humanities. Most particularly in France, as well as in Great Britain and Latin America, his ideas exercised a decisive shaping influence on theoretical debates in the 1960s and 1970s.74 In respect to social history, one can contend that with Althusser, a new history of ideologies becomes feasible: one that is no longer a traditional

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history of ideas. The Marxist concept of ideology was opened up and rendered receptive for questions that had previously been formulated only in non-Marxist categories by the Annales and the history of mentality. This was not simply another term or translation for “mentalities,” but a more precise conception of the phenomena it referred to. The thesis of the materiality of ideology, its imaginary structure, the notion that ideology forms the subject and has a “centering” effect, the contribution of ideological forms of praxis, ritual, and apparatus to social reproduction—all this stimulated further empirical research. The process of the productive reception and utilization of this concept of ideology can be observed with especial clarity in studies on the eighteenth century and the French Revolution. Régine Robin, Jacques Guilhaumou, and others drew inspiration from the concept for their studies of the “organic crisis” of the ancien régime and the ideological and discursive upheavals of the revolution.75 The “problematic of transition,” which Robin juxtaposed to the traditional Marxist interpretation of 1789 as a mere “seizure of power by the bourgeoisie,” was strongly opposed by orthodox Marxist historians. That opposition indicated the presence of a symptomatic convergence between the concepts of ideology and mentality; Albert Soboul, for example, rejected the notion of mentality (he once remarked to his student Vovelle: “Do me a favor and never use that word again in my presence”76) with the same vehemence that he countered the attempts to rethink social and ideological theory inspired by Althusser.77 Georges Duby likewise repeatedly stressed that he had been influenced by his reading of Althusser while shifting his research interests from medieval economic history to the study of patterns of behavior and thinking.78 Finally, one should mention the field of working-class history, where the competing concept of “class consciousness” played a central role. As a result of the reception of the Althusserian concept of ideology, new questions began to be posed in research on the everyday practice and the idéologie pratique of proletarian and/or bourgeois politics. Taking the thesis of materiality as a point of departure, Gérard Noiriel, for example, has analyzed the patriarchal practices of entrepreneurs in the French steel industry, exploring the connection between factory discipline and organization of plant free time by associations, celebrations, and the like.79 And in England, historians connected with the history workshop movement and the Centre for Contemporary Cultural Studies (Birmingham) have developed new ways of looking at the forms of traditional “workers’ culture” and its contradictions, animated by ideas from Althusser, Gramsci, and others.80 Admittedly, there are a number of weaknesses and problems in the Althusserian concept of ideology that cannot be overlooked. One difficulty is that Althusser gave prominence to the reproductive function of

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ideologies, and their centering by the state, so that at first glance it would appear illusory to think that the system could ever be overcome. Take, for example, his provocative concept of the “ideological state apparatus” (appareils idéologiques d’Etat), which bears a distant similarity to Gramscian ideas but places greater emphasis on the importance of state structures for implementing and cementing bourgeois hegemony.81 Does such a “supramaterialist” concept of ideology not imply a kind of vicious circle of integration, in which any rebellion is situated right from the start, and thus doomed to failure? Moreover, doesn’t the ineluctable nature of assujetissement (subjectification)—in the double sense of being subjugated to the level of a subject and being raised to the level of an acting subject—correspond to a reciprocity in the nature of “habitualization” (in the sense of Bourdieu) which is virtually insurmountable?82 Yet how then can such a concept function as an instrument for historical-critical analysis? Another unresolved complex of problems concerns the relation between ideology and the unconscious. Not only does the thesis of “imaginary representation” create a direct link—it also suggests an interpretation in which the imaginary is declared to be the “essence” of ideology, thus viewing ideology merely as the phenomenal “expression” of a constant and abiding, general universal feature of human nature. In addition, Althusser largely reduces the dimension of the unconscious (in the psychoanalytical sense) to that of the imaginary; the upshot of this is that the split in the subject rooted in the symbolic sphere (“The ego is not the master of his own house”) and its diverse “lapses” (ranging from a simple slip of the tongue to political revolt . . .) are not taken into sufficient account.83 These and similar problems have been instructively dealt with in papers by researchers in a number of disciplines in the human sciences.84 The studies of Michel Pêcheux, which develop the project of a theory of ideology with the aid of linguistic approaches, appear to me especially important in respect to the questions raised.85 Pêcheux combined the concepts of “social formation” and “ideology,” revitalized by Althusser in the concept of “ideological formation” (formation idéologique), placing it alongside the concept of “discursive formation” (formation discursive) borrowed from Foucault: By ideological formation, we intend to characterize an element that can intervene at a given point in time as one force vis-à-vis other forces in the ideological economy of a specific formation of society. Every ideological formation forms in this way a complex ensemble of attitudes and ideas which are neither “individual” nor “universal,” but rather relate more or less directly to class positions that are in conflict with one another. We main-

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tain . . . that the ideological formations defined in this manner encompass, among other things, one or several interconnected discursive formations which determine in each case what can and must be said. . . . The crucial aspect here is that what is important is not just the words employed, but . . . especially the constructions in which these words are associated, since only then can the meaning of these words be defined. [That is,] words “change their meaning” by moving from one discursive formation to another.86

On the basis of these premises, Pêcheux developed a method of discursive analysis designed to investigate the linguistic structure of discourse formations and the multiple meanings produced by that structure using the aid of computerized procedures (see the section titled Discourses below). In order to avoid any misunderstandings, let me add that Pêcheux did not assume a direct, quasi-linear relation between classes, ideologies, and discourses. He specifically criticized the project of “sociolinguistics,” for example, since it does not pay sufficient attention either to ideology’s own materiality or to the materiality of language.87 Language for Pêcheux is not simply a “mediator” of meanings (significations) that originate elsewhere and must be hermeneutically interpreted—that is, brought back into relation with this origin. Rather, it is the complex structure of discourses as a system of significations which produces the “effects” of meaning in which human subjects find a “sense.” To sum up his approach, one could say that he accepted the risks associated with a type of interdisciplinary analysis of language that combines structural linguistic with Lacanian psychoanalysis and the Marxism of Althusser. Utilizing a critique of traditional “evidence,” both from semantics and psychology, he arrived at new theses about the possible changes in the “subject-form” (forme sujet—Althusser) within the conflict-torn field of dominant and dominated ideologies. While Althusser spoke only in very general terms about an “interpellation” of individuals as “subjects” (interpellation en sujets), Pêcheux distinguished three different modalities of constituting the subject—identification, counteridentification and disidentification—whose respective discursive structure had to be analyzed.88 And finally, while Althusser only presupposed the existence of ideological forms of resistance among the proletariat, but was never able to investigate them, Pêcheux saw that the decisive point of contact between ideology and the unconscious lay in the materiality of discourse, so that he was able to rediscover the traditional concept of “dominated ideology” and transform it for his purposes: Ideology touches the unconscious via the path through what is impossible. Lapses and slips highlight the impossibility of an ideological domination devoid of contradiction. The series of effects summarized here by “lapse”

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and “slip” thus constantly infect every dominant ideology from within the practices themselves in which it tries to realize itself. The curses and blasphemies that slip from the mouths of the devout in all faiths, unawares and against their will, the interruptions that occur in a ritual just when least expected, the ambiguities that suddenly erupt from behind the most sacred sentence or holiest gesture—all this has something very precise to do with that point that was always there all the time, the imaginary origin of resistance and revolt. . . . Dominated ideologies crystallize nowhere else but at the point of domination itself, in and against it, through all the ruptures and obstacles that inescapably determine such ideologies—even when domination extends to the point where “nothing can be done about it” because “that’s the way it is.” What remain are the “about it” and the “it,” which will return in an unpredictable shape in the blunders of interpellation.89

Although Pêcheux’s writings are still not known to a larger public,90 it is not astonishing that they have become theoretical points of reference for historical studies, based on their special sensibility for the paradoxes of power and the surprising effects of subversive forms of praxis.91 They form one of the most important interfaces between the theory of ideology and the theory of discourse.

Discourses In recent years, the term “discourse” has become so fashionable that one might prefer to avoid its further propagation or inclusion as an object of theoretical reflection. This trend in the Federal Republic, however, goes back to a concept quite different from the one intended here. In actual fact, Diskurs in the German-speaking countries is largely understood in the Habermasian sense of “discourse ethics”; that is, it involves a philosophical designation for a rational dialogue, as free as possible from domination, between enlightened subjects. In contrast, the concept of discourse deriving from Michel Foucault refers to a specific linguistic materiality which is institutionalized as a manner of expression in society, endowed with “built-in” effects of power and resistance in one form or another. While it is not accidental that the Habermasian concept appears in the singular, because it intends to designate an ideal epistemological situation, the Foucaultian concept is empirically open and tends to be used in the plural.92 One might suggest that instead of talking about “discourse analysis,” one should substitute the term “language analysis”—so as to avoid having to use an expression “in vogue.” Gareth Stedman Jones, for example,

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chose this option in his book Languages of Class.93 But the price of such conceptual abstinence is a confusing vagueness. If everything boils down to language and nothing else, it is difficult to steer clear of traditional forms of the history of ideas.94 The special role of the concept of discourse can be best illustrated by looking at earlier forms of language analysis.95 In actual fact, the relevance of language as a source is not a new discovery for historiography. The founders of the Annales, to mention that example once again, were particularly interested in historical studies of language and concepts. In the early volumes of the periodical, there was a special section called “Les mots et les choses,” and Lucien Febvre in particular dealt in a large number of essays with concepts such as capitalism, labor, and civilization from the perspective of the history of mentalities.96 Later on, the project of a “historical semantics” was continued especially by Alphonse Dupront, who considered such a semantics to be a “foundation discipline” for the reconstruction of historical “contexts of meaning.”97 Without wishing to underestimate the achievements of these relatively few and rather isolated attempts, it is obvious that only with the impact of “structuralism” and the explicit reception and utilization of structural linguistics and sign theory among social scientists and historians did a transformation occur in the attitude toward language. Now the question was no longer just one of material of a linguistic nature, such as was common in historiography; it was the materiality itself of this material that took on interest, since it contained a system of signs that could be utilized as a specific historical source. Via the detour of an interpretation of the ideas of de Saussure, structuralism also facilitated a new receptivity for Freud, Nietzsche, and Marx. The upshot was that the dominance of hermeneutic procedures, which up until that point had never been called into question, was now suddenly open to debate. The reading of texts was no longer linked to the postulate of the transparency and evidence of a meaning that has always existed, and the existence of a creative authorsubject. Instead, “sense” and “subjectivity” were conceived as effects, as products and constructs whose facilitating conditions had to be analyzed in each specific case.98 This new relation toward language—the linguistic constitution of meaning, the norming of knowledge, and so on—is closely bound up with the concept of “discourse.” That respected concept, not marked as a “foreign word” in the French language, was accorded a special theoretical status in the work of Michel Foucault.99 Based on the “historical epistemology” of Bachelard, Koyré, and Canguilhem,100 Foucault—in his studies on the history of medicine, biology, and several of the human sciences—put forward a method which attempted to reconstruct the radical changes in the history of knowledge in the eighteenth and nineteenth cen-

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turies by looking at special, institutionalized modes of expression. Traditional intellectual history and hermeneutic exegesis of meaning were to be replaced by the “positive” description of “discursive fields”: [W]e must grasp the statement in the exact specificity of its occurrence; determine its conditions of existence, fix at least its limits, establish its correlations with other statements that may be connected with it, and show what other forms of statement it excludes. We do not seek below what is manifest the half silent murmur of another discourse; we must show why it could not be other than it was, in what respect it is exclusive of any other, how it assumes, in the midst of others and in relation to them, a place that no other could occupy. The question proper to such analysis might be formulated in this way: what is this specific existence that emerges from what is said and nowhere else?101

In retrospect, Foucault’s concept of discourse analysis appears to be an attempt to overcome the weaknesses of existing concepts of mentality and ideology and to open up an approach to the “third level” that is not narrowed by “psychologistic” or “economistic” strictures of vision. Those two traditional concepts were to be “resolved”—aufgehoben in a virtually Hegelian dialectical manner—in the new concept of “discursive formation,” reminiscent of Althusser’s concept of “social formation.” Even the traditional question regarding the relation between mentalities and economy, or superstructure and base, was reformulated and resolved in a new way by Foucault: [T]he archaeological description of discourses is deployed in the dimension of a general history; it seeks to discover that whole domain of institutions, economic processes, and social relations on which a discursive formation can be articulated; it tries to show how the autonomy of discourse and its specificity nevertheless do not give it the status of pure ideality and total historical independence; what it wishes to uncover is the particular level in which history can give place to definite types of discourse, which have their own type of historicity, and which are related to a whole set of various historicities.102

Stimulated by Foucault, or by the often “parallel” work of linguists such as Algirdas Greimas and literary theorists like Roland Barthes, there have been a number of attempts since the early 1960s to delimit, grasp, and investigate historical discourses “empirically.” It is useful to pick out and briefly sketch some of the most important of these methodological approaches in order to illuminate the possibilities and problems offered by such analyses in respect to historiography. Linguistic and technical aspects will be excluded here. In addition, one should keep in mind that in practice, there are overlappings and divisions of labor between almost all

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the approaches. Despite differing theoretical options, the choice of one or another approach ultimately depends on the concrete historical questions raised and the sources available.103 The most frequent form of discourse analysis is undoubtedly the lexicological and semantic investigation of individual words, concepts, or metaphors. Which words appear in one or more texts, where, when, and how often? What complementarities, oppositions, or substitutions can be established between these words or word combinations (syntagmata)? In this way, the basic outline of a semantic field can be traced which (co)determines the denotations and connotations of terminologies. Beyond the history of individual, on occasion very special or “high relief,” key concepts, analytical sights are trained on historically determined, “contemporary” ways of speaking and stereotypes which form the linguistic reservoir of mentalities and ideologies. Particularly those types of text relevant for the history of everyday life (autobiographies, interviews, newspapers, leaflets, court protocols, etc., as well as pictorial documents in some cases) can be subjected in this way to a different reading. The spectrum of this kind of analyses is extremely variegated. It ranges from discourse-oriented (i.e., not focusing on the isolated concept) genealogies of concepts to the investigation of entire specialist terminologies or political vocabularies. The relation between interests in linguistic and historical findings (and “technical” effort) differs correspondingly. While Jean Dubois, for example, has examined the political vocabulary during the transition from the Second Empire to the Third Republic primarily from the standpoint of technical linguistics, resulting only secondarily in the spin-off of several “extra” findings of historical interest (such as the concrete transition from the plural classes ouvrières to the singular classe ouvrière, with its connotation of militancy),104 Régine Robin has taken a different tack. In her study on the Semur-en-Auxois district, she attempts to apply a number of social-historical hypotheses to the vocabulary of the urban and rural cahiers de doléances (grievance booklets sent to the National Assembly of 1789). In so doing, for example, she is able to work out and verify—with greater precision than in previous research—the opposition between town and rural area or the masked ideological antagonisms between the bourgeoisie and the lower classes.105 Jacques Guilhaumou is also in search primarily of historical insights in his studies on Père Duchesne, the periodical of the Hébertists, 1793–94. One of his theses, here disagreeing with Albert Souboul’s assertions, is that Père Duchesne was not a mouthpiece of the sansculottes; rather, it propagated a popularizing variant of Jacobin ideology.106 A further example is Gérard Miller’s study on the language of the Pétain regime,107 in which the patriarchal discourse of subjugation associated with French fascism is dis-

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sected, using in the main psychoanalytical concepts, and based on a quantitative analysis of the press.108 Rolf Reichardt’s recent studies on the history of the “Bastille” concept109 have shown what possibilities can be opened up by a “historical semantics” that utilizes the methodological angles offered by discourse analysis—instead of those “familiar climbs over the summits in the history of ideas.”110 Reichardt, proceeding on the basis of a systematic evaluation of the numerous anti-Bastille pamphlets, which came to form their own veritable literary subgenre in the period 1774 to 1790–91, is able to (re)construct the transformation of the “Bastille” from a key word for the critique of despotism into an “activist concept of duty”—and, later on, into a quasi-obligatory symbol of national unity and postrevolutionary identity. His approach is marked by a consistent effort to objectify his findings, employing, to the extent that the sources permit, serial procedures of evaluation. Thus, for example, in order to establish the respective semantic field of the Bastille concept, all occurrences (tokens) of the term “Bastille” are recorded and classified in terms of four main categories: “All concepts and expressions that define ‘Bastille’ directly, i.e., substitute for it in a syntagmatic continuum and thus form in effect the semantic field (paradigmatic field of relations); words associated with ‘Bastille,’ which provide the concept with content, explain and differentiate it (syntagmatic field of relations); all concepts and names that designate the causes and instigators of the ‘Bastille’ and their supposed practice; finally, all systematic counterconcepts to ‘Bastille’ (functional antonyms).”111 This procedure results in frequency lists that can be presented as frequency hierarchies in tabular or synoptic form (figure 1). In interpreting the data, Reichardt notes: The vocabulary which directly defines the concept of “Bastille,” limited in 1774 basically to the paradigms prison and especially château [castle], whose neutrality suggests classifying them in the terminology of specialists, gives way in 1789 in one half [of figure 1] to the designation forteresse, which is of the same nature; on the other, it is pushed aside by a variety of emphatic negative expressions that make July 14 appear like the execution of a previous semantic death sentence. But this politicization did not come out of the blue, as it were, but was prepared in the neighboring domain: to the extent that the crush of the crowd is lessened in the syntagmatic field of relations . . . the paradigmatic field of relations fills up. In the process, the concept of despotism even shifts in part from the syntagmata to the paradigms. By contrast, while the word-field domain of “causalities” reveals a constant attribution of guilt, placed esp. at the feet of the gouverneur of the

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Figure 1: Medium-term transformation of the semantic field of “Bastille” in the comparison of two texts (adapted from Reichardt, “Zur Geschicht,” 59).

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“Bastille,” functional antonyms, present embryonically in 1774, have increased their frequency tenfold by 1789. The ranks of those antonyms are led by the concept of freedom, charged with the political enthusiasm of the first phase of the revolution.112

The semiotic approach pioneered by Jürgen Link can be mentioned as another variant of discourse analysis; it investigates the function of linguistic “collective symbols” both in “high literature” and in everyday texts (what Link terms “elementary literature”). The crucial point is his concept of “interdiscourse,” which Link uses to designate the greatest common denominator between the various “special discourses” (such as medical, legal, or economic discourse): There are . . . discursive elements that are not merely limited to a single or a small number of special discourses, but rather agree and correspond between several discourses. Typical for this is collective symbolism. . . . Today one finds the expression fairneß regularly used not just in sports discourse, but in legal, political, religious [discourse], etc.; fairneß would thus be a typical interdiscursive element. The individual discourses . . . can be distinguished in terms of the magnitude of their respective interdiscursive portion: the special sciences are furthest removed from interdiscourse, while journalistic, political, and literary discourses are most heavily anchored in interdiscourse. The purely semantic (natural-language-connected) elements (symbols, set expressions, myths, characters, “phrases,” etc.) form in their totality the basis of “ideological systems” (Marx/Engels), since they totalize subdomains of society in an imaginary manner (figuratively).113

While shifts in meaning and the immediate contexts of individual words occupy center stage in other variants of discourse analysis, this approach is especially suited for objectifying the field of everyday “world images,” often considered vague and diffuse.114 The “swarm of symbols” can be read as a winding course of catachreses (paradoxical figures of speech), whose modifications and cycles of reproduction evince certain regularities. Since the reservoir of “collective symbols” (such as balloon, railroad, steamer, etc.) that repeatedly appear in different historical periods (and language areas) is limited—even though one can naturally play with and continue to vary these symbols—it is possible to work out a veritable “grid of analogies” which delineates the field of action available for contemporary discourse.* Of course, one problem of all lexicologically or thematically oriented discourse analyses is just how representative their sources or findings are. One possible solution is to amass a * A table entitled “Equivalence chain of dominant practices, ideologemes and symbols in the 19th century” has been removed by the publisher of the English edition. The table appears in both the German and French editions of this volume.

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corpus so large that its evaluation will at least be statistically significant. This is the approach of lexicometry, which carries out lexicological analysis on a grand scale with the aid of computers. It does not merely select individual thematic words, concepts or syntagmata, but rather compiles enormous amounts of text and processes the material, resulting in as complete a picture as possible of the data.115 This approach is illustrated in exemplary fashion by Maurice Tournier’s study of French “workers’ vocabulary” in the period from February to June 1848.116 Here too, the statistical framework does not preclude a certain preselection of content: the corpus of “workers’ texts” forming the basis of the analysis consists, for example, of handwritten petitions to the National Assembly (totaling some 65,000 items) as well as a selection of articles from the workers’ paper L’Atelier and extracts from Proudhon’s writings, along with pamphlets and workers’ songs. A test corpus for comparative purposes was assembled consisting of the writings of Louis Blanc, various “red” authors (Blanqui, Barbès), and “romantic” authors (Lamartine, Victor Hugo). In order to facilitate a supplementary temporal comparison, selected texts from workers’ associations of the 1830s and 1840s as well as the Jacobins (1793) were also evaluated. Careful preliminary explanations that are similar to conceptual history, tedious counts, and statistical correlation computations provide a wealth of hypotheses, especially involving the political valence of certain terms (such as peuple, ouvriers, société, hommes). Tournier’s main thesis is that the vocabulary of workers’ petitions had moved very distant from Jacobin discourse by 1848, while the lexicon of “romantic” and “red” politicians and authors was even more strongly oriented in terms of the model of the Great Revolution. One of the drawbacks of lexicometric analysis is that only the words are read by the computer, while the syntatic structures in which the embedded words gain their true meaning and become discourse cannot be handled by computer methods. This is the point of departure for other analysis procedures that have sometimes been called the “French school of discourse analysis.”117 The common feature in such procedures is that they are all animated by the distributional model of the American linguist Zellig Harris, popularized in France at the end of the 1960s by Jean Dubois.118 Using this method, an objective linguistic textual matrix is prepared based exclusively on formal rules of syntax, in contrast with traditional methods of content analysis. Texts can be dissected into their linguistic segments and regrouped in line with concepts and themes. Their seemingly unique morphology can be “leveled,” and the structure of statements of different texts can be systematically compared without dealing directly with their content. The resulting possibilities for working out an “objective” typology of

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political or social discourses were explored in particular by practitioners of so-called sociolinguistic discourse analysis in France. Representative of this current are the studies by Jean-Baptiste Marcellesi on socialist and communist discourse in the years 1920–25—that is, from the split with the Socialist Party to the “bolshevizing” of the PCF.119 Using a corpus of texts containing key passages from speeches at party conventions and the more or less distorted reporting of those speeches in the daily press, Marcellesi analyses variations and features of the lexicon in respect to central topics such as “socialism,” “politics,” and “Bolshevism.” The most significant finding is his demonstration that the two opposed (socialist and communist) discourses were linguistically much closer than one might surmise on the basis of an intuitive content analysis. Conversely, however, it is also shown that oppositions in content were frequently masked by rhetorical compromises or by simulating the other (opposed) discourse. To that extent, this study confirms the finding in social history and the history of organizations that the concrete line separating supporters and opponents of the Third International was short-term and “conjunctural,” and did not derive from any long-term “natural” structural split into two workers’ movements.120 However, the objection has been raised that such analyses tend to posit an isomorphism between social discourse and social practice, and that discourses are read as a direct medium—or even a mere mirror—of social confrontations. Critics contend that the special materiality of language and the linguistic generation of meaning is not given sufficient attention.121 This is the point of departure for the method of “automatic discourse analysis” developed by Pêcheux.122 “Automatic” here does not mean “technical,” but should be understood in a theoretical sense of “nonsubjective”; in addition, it contains a clear allusion to the surrealist practice of “automatic writing.” In contrast to sociolinguistic discourse analysis, this approach does not aim at hierarchizing and typologizing manners of speech and expression, but attempts to present the effects of meaning appearing in the framework of different discourse formations. The procedure operates roughly as follows: the various corpora of texts that will be compared with each other are first broken down into meaning sequences, whose elementary statements are “delinearized” and transformed into binary relations. Then all the linkages, superimpositions, and dependencies of these meaning relations are computed using a multistage computer program. Utilizing this data base, it becomes possible to generate graphic representations of the “semantic fields” of the discourses to be compared. Finally, there is the stage of interpretation, expressly oriented along social-scientific or historical lines, rather than linguistic ones. Questions relevant to psychoanalysis and the theory of ideology play a major role here.

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As this formal description already suggests, the method is extremely time-consuming and complicated; moreover, it is best suited only for comparing short, representative texts whose different meaning relations can be presented sentence by sentence. Nonetheless, a number of studies have been published which utilize the method to analyze such diverse phenomena as the discourse of the illuminati in the eighteenth century, the discourse of student groups in May 1968, the specific discourses of socialists and communists in recent French politics, or Communist Party discourse in the Soviet Union during the 1960s.123 There are by now a quite large number of empirical discourse analyses that work with one of the methods sketched here (or with other analytical techniques derived from them).124 For historians, these studies offer not just an array of stimulating ideas in respect to content, but often contain source material that has already been subjected in large part to processing and analysis. However, there is a problem connected with the fact that this material, as a result of formal, linguistically motivated selections and transformations, is now in a physical state that makes social-historical analysis of the data extremely difficult if not impossible (just as highly aggregated economic statistics often have little value for a scholar interested in microhistorical aspects). While the enormous expenditure of effort may be justified from the point of view of linguistics (and concrete gains in linguistic knowledge), the actual historical result is often quite negligible. As already alluded to in connection with several examples, such analyses frequently only serve to confirm the theses of “normal” research. Régine Robin, who was the first professional historian in France to use and adapt methods developed by linguists with historical interests, recently commented in self-critical fashion: “Making use of our tables and equivalence classes, we were able at best to ‘prove’ in rigorous fashion what historical knowledge had already established elsewhere.”125 For that reason, it is hardly surprising—and not merely a product of a narrow-minded conception—if only a few historians to date have chosen to plow the fields of this terrain (notably Robin, Guilhaumou, Prost, Reichardt). Yet it should also be borne in mind that the concept of discourse is still relatively new, and there have been only scattered attempts to apply it in historical studies. It is thus quite conceivable that within the framework of a flexible further development, the needs of historiography will be given greater attention and the concerns of linguistics will recede into the background: the result would be a substantial increase in the yield of such studies for the field of history. In any event, the concept of discourse has already made a major contribution to the process of establishing the “third level” as a theme in socialhistorical research. It has sharpened awareness for the fact that language is not just a passive medium for the transport and communication of

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meanings. It is only apparently transparent, and consciously “selected” only by a small proportion of subjects. Nevertheless, words do not appear accidentally, even if they sometimes burst forth in a surprising way as curses, slips of the tongue, or associations of thoughts, and so forth. Rather, their “radius” and “mode of production” are determined and regulated by the respective discourse formations. These rules can be approximatively determined. Discourse analysis—as the morphology of semantic fields—is thus an enterprise much broader in scope than a “history of concepts” focused merely on selective points (though it can enter into a good working relation with such approaches), and opens up more extensive vistas in social-historical research. In addition, it directs scrutiny to the language used by historians themselves, contributing in this way to viewing their “mode of writing” and the principles of construction underlying historical descriptions as problematic.126 Discourse theory links up here with the more recent discussion on questions of rhetoric, narrative analysis, and the legitimate or illegitimate fictionality of historiography.127 But this special aspect cannot be dealt with in detail in the framework of the present paper. Instead, I would like to conclude by turning to a theoretical and methodological problem of differentiation that is at the same time connected with the question of the possible linkages between mentalities, ideologies, and discourses.

By Way of Conclusion There are two perspectives evident in previous studies in discourse analysis whose divergent implications have often been overlooked. On the one hand, discourses are read and scrutinized in respect to social stratification. Then the guiding questions posed are, for example: What interdependencies exist between one’s position in society and linguistic forms of articulation? Are there genuine “class jargons,” or is the logic of discourse formations shaped at least indirectly by class-specific forms of praxis as well as by restrictions in rendering “consciousness” in spoken and written language, and so forth? On the other hand, there is a second perspective in such studies, focused primarily on the differentiated nature and specialization of discourses. It raises questions such as: To what degree, and on the basis of what “division of labor” do discourses represent societal areas of knowledge (= “culture”)? What linkages, selections, and exclusions occur, and how finally do reduction and imaginary totalization come about in so-called interdiscourse? While the vertical axis of social differentiation tends to be in the foreground in those approaches that are “Marxist” in the broadest sense of the term, extending from sociolinguistics to Pêcheux and Robin, the analyses that are “structuralist”

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(again in the widest possible sense), from Foucault to Link, are more concerned with the horizontal axis of functional categorization. So perhaps one could say that one axis gives preference to class-specific forms of praxis and ideologies, while the other axis tends to be more interested in the class-transcending (though by no means “neutral”!) stereotypes and mentalities. However, cannot both axes be conceived of as interconnected? Or are we dealing here de facto with parallel concepts that never “intersect,” so that we are forced to decide whether we are more interested in the linkage between ideologies and discourses or that between mentalities and discourses?128 Following up several proposals by Link,129 one might hypothesize that the “mutual interaction”—that is, the cyclic development of formations of society and discourse—can perhaps be best conceptualized using a notion borrowed from Gramsci, namely, “social-historical block.”130 This block is not shaped by substantial concrete classes or other “collective subjects,” but rather by hegemonial (block-formative) processes of reproduction and transformation. In this way, the “vertical axis” of ideology and discourse formations could be conceptualized together with the “horizontal axis” of mentalities, special discourses, and interdiscourses131—without positing a relation of mirroring or expression between the individual levels. This would suggest a possibility, however abstract and tentative, for moving beyond the traditional oppositions of content versus form, “in itself” versus “for itself,” latent versus manifest, and so on, to combine the concepts of mentality, ideology, and discourse without canceling out their respective special features. Only future studies will be able to show to what extent the innovative potential of these three concepts can be tapped for the purposes of social history and combined in terms of a reciprocal complementation and correction. Differentiations and alternatives remain open to further discussion. In my view, it is important to see the three concepts not as theoretical and methodological universal keys that mutually exclude each other; rather, their respective limitations must be taken into account. In any event, one ought to be careful not to universalize these concepts. Not everything should have been subsumed under “ideology” in the past, and today, we should take heed not to pigeonhole every statement as some sort of “discourse”—or categorize every intellectual attitude as “mentality.” It is not enough to change or add a few labels; rather, it is always imperative to constantly keep in mind the theoretical implications of the concepts. For that reason, arranging mentalities, ideologies, and discourses in some sort of (linear) series or (hierarchical) layering does not suffice. In doing so, one tends only to reproduce the traditional problem of the homology between base and superstructure, economy and society, class position and class consciousness, and so on. What is necessary is to

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experiment with complex coupling maneuvers in which concepts such as “interdiscourse” and “social-historical block” could prove especially useful. The “third level” of history, which frequently serves only as a shiny mirror of the other two, could in this way acquire its own structure and depth by being exposed to the “concentrated” rays emanating from these three different concepts.

Notes 1. P. Burke, “Strengths and Weaknesses of the History of Mentalities,” History of European Ideas 7 (1986): 440. 2. J. Lacan, Le Séminaire, vol. 1, Les écrits techniques de Freud (Paris, 1975), 8. 3. This paper is based on a lecture delivered in July 1986 in the research colloquium of Prof. Reinhart Koselleck at the University of Bielefeld. The text was later also discussed in the research colloquium directed by Karin Hausen, Wolfgang Hofmann, Heinz Reif, and Reinhard Rürup at the Technical University, Berlin. I would like to express my sincere thanks to all discussion participants as well as all my colleagues and friends who read the manuscript critically at various stages and suggested changes. I owe a special debt of gratitude to Barbara Hahn for her continuing criticism and support. 4. Quoted in P. Chaunu, “Un nouveau champ pour l’histoire sérielle: le quantitatif au troisième niveau,” in Mélanges en l’honneur de Fernand Braudel, vol. 2 (Toulouse, 1973), 108. The “three levels” (niveaux) allude to the subtitle of the periodical Annales and the distinction between “economy,” “society,” and “civilization” (in the sense of mentalities and culture). 5. H.-U. Wehler, Das Deutsche Kaiserreich 1871–1918 (Göttingen, 1973), 105. It is also striking that in his recently published Deutsche Gesellschaftsgeschichte, vols. 1–2 (Munich, 1987), the “third level” of “culture” is presented without Wehler’s customary theoretical commentary. It seems to be “stuck on,” as it were, so that even its intermeshing with the other “levels” does not pose any theoretical questions. 6. On the debate with a brand of historiography that is “subject-oriented” and generally resorts to Hegelian teleological figures of thought, see G. Stedman Jones, Klassen, Politik und Sprache (Münster, 1988), including my introduction, 9–42; originally published as Languages of Class (Cambridge, 1983). This topic of subjectivity is, however, not limited to critical Marxists and also enjoys great popularity, for example, in states of “already existing socialism.” Just recall the slogans in the GDR such as “Man as the creator of himself” (Der Mensch als Schöpfer seiner selbst) or “It’s nice being a subject” (Subjekt sein ist schön). 7. The limitation here of presenting largely French research approaches is justified partially on the basis of the origin and practice of the three approaches mentioned. For an international comparative survey, although concentrating mainly on concepts of linguistic and discourse analysis, see my parallel essay: P. Schöttler, “Sozialgeschichtliches Paradigma und historische Diskursanalyse,”

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in Diskurstheorien und Literaturwissenschaft, ed. J. Fohrmann and H. Müller (Frankfurt am Main, 1988), 159–99; English translation in History Workshop Journal 27 (1989): 37–65. I naturally make no claims here to analytical completeness or bibliographical exhaustiveness. The important concept of folk culture, for example, or various concepts proposed in the framework of historical anthropology are undoubtedly just as worthy of discussion as the approaches treated here, and would have to be compared with these in respect to their theoretical selectivity and their ability to be empirically operationalized. On this, see R. van Dülmen and N. Schindler, eds., Volkskultur. Zur Wiederentdeckung des vergessenen Alltags (16.–20. Jahrhundert) (Frankfurt am Main, 1984); W. Kaschuba, Volkskultur zwischen feudaler und bürgerlicher Gesellschaft. Zur Geschichte eines Begriffs und seiner gesellschaftlichen Wirklichkeit (Frankfurt am Main and New York, 1988), as well as the essay by Kaschuba in the present volume. 8. Basic studies are especially the anthology C. Honegger, ed., Schrift und Materie der Geschichte. Vorschläge zu einer systematischen Aneignung historischer Prozesse (Frankfurt am Main, 1977), esp. 313ff., and the research survey by R. Reichardt, “ ‘Histoire des Mentalités.’ Eine neue Dimension der Sozialgeschichte am Beispiel des französischen Ancien Régime,” Internationales Archiv für Sozialgeschichte der Literatur 3 (1978): 130–66. See also E. Hinrichs, “Mentalitätsgeschichte und regionale Aufklärungsforschung,” in Regionalgeschichte. Probleme und Beispiele, ed. E. Hinrichs and W. Norden (Hildesheim, 1980), 21– 41; Hinrichs, “Zum Stand der historischen Mentalitätsforschung in Deutschland,” Ethnologia Europea 11 (1979–80): 226–33; H. Schultze, “Mentalitätsgeschichte—Chancen und Grenzen eines Paradigmas der französischen Geschichtswissenschaft,” Geschichte in Wissenschaft und Unterricht 36 (1985): 247–71; V. Sellin, “Mentalität und Mentalitätsgeschichte,” Historische Zeitschrift 241 (1985): 556–98; Sellin, “Mentalitäten in der Sozialgeschichte,” in Sozialgeschichte in Deutschland, ed. W. Schieder and V. Sellin, vol. 3 (Göttingen, 1987), 101–21; U. Raulff, ed., Mentalitäten-Geschichte (Berlin, 1987). 9. For an introduction to the historiography of the Annales, see Honegger, ed., Schrift und Materie; G. Iggers, New Directions in European Historiography (Middletown, 1975), 55ff.; M. Erbe, Zur neueren französischen Sozialgeschichtsforschung. Die Gruppe um die “Annales” (Darmstadt, 1979). A useful reference work is J. Le Goff, ed., La Nouvelle Histoire (Paris, 1978). On its late reception and utilization, via various detours, see Schöttler, “Sozialgeschichtliches Paradigma,” 173ff.; on the French confrontation with the legacy of the Annales, see among others: J. Chesneaux, Du Passé faisons table rase? (Paris, 1976); G. Bourdé and H. Martin, Les Ecoles historiques (Paris, 1983), 171ff.; F. Dosse, L’Histoire en miettes: Des “Annales” à la “nouvelle histoire” (Paris, 1987). My own view of Annales history has developed since writing this essay (1986). See, now, P. Schöttler, “Une Historienne autrichienne aux ‘Annales,’ ” in Lucie Varga, ed., Les autorités invisibles (Paris, 1991). 10. Only a few texts from the early period of the Annales have been translated to date into German: M. Bloch, Apologie pour l’histoire, ou Métier d’historien (Paris, 1949 [1940–41]); German translation: Apologie der Geschichte oder der Beruf des Historikers (Stuttgart, 1974); Bloch, La Société féodale (Paris, 1949 [1939–40]); German translation: Die Feudalgesellschaft (Frankfurt am Main,

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Berlin, and Vienna, 1980); L. Febvre, Un Destin—Martin Luther (Paris, 1928); German translation: Martin Luther, Religion als Schicksal (Frankfurt am Main, Berlin, and Vienna, 1976); L. Febvre, Das Gewissen des Historikers (Berlin, 1988) [collected programmatic essays]. See also the references in n. 9 above. 11. This important linguistic differentiation is naturally lost if the French adjective mental is translated into German as geistig. Thus, for example, you have the absurd situation in a book by Georges Duby that the author distances himself from the German concept of Geistesgeschichte, while in the very same sentence, his translator foists on him the concept of geistige Strukturen to characterize his own position—instead of mentale Strukturen. See Duby, Wirklichkeit und höfischer Traum. Zur Kultur des Mittelalters (Berlin, 1986), 10. On the origin of the concept of mentality, see the essays by J. Le Goff, A. Burguière, and U. Raulff in Raulff, ed., Mentalitäten-Geschichte, 18ff., as well as Sellin, “Mentalität.” 12. Some exemplary studies in the French tradition of the history of mentalities: M. Bloch, Les Rois thaumaturges: Etude sur le caractère surnaturel attribué à la puissance royale particulièrement en France et en Angleterre (Paris, 1924 [rev. ed. 1983]); Bloch, La Société féodale,; G. Lefebvre, La Grande Peur de 1789 (Paris, 1932); Lefebvre, Le Problème de l’incroyance au 16e siècle: La religion de Rabelais (Paris, 1942 [rev. ed. 1968]); H. Brunschwig, Société et romantisme en Prusse au XVIIIe siècle—La crise de l’Etat prussien à la fin du XVIIIe siècle et la gènese de la mentalité romantique (Paris, 1973 [1947]); P. Ariès, Centuries of Childhood: A Social History of Family Life (New York, 1962 [1960]); G. Duby, Guerriers et paysans—VIIe et XIIe siècle: Premier essor de l’économie européenne (Paris, 1973); Duby, Le Dimanche de Bouvines: 27 juillet 1914 (Paris, 1973); Duby, Les Trois Ordres ou l’imaginaire du féodalisme (Paris, 1978); J. Le Goff, Les Intellectuels au Moyen-Age (Paris, 1976 [1957]); Le Goff, Pour un autre Moyen-Age: temps, travail et culture en Occident—18 essais (Paris, 1977); Le Goff, La Naissance du Purgatoire (Paris, 1981); E. Le Roy Ladurie, Montaillou, village occitan de 1294 à 1324 (Paris, 1975); Le Roy Ladurie, Le Carnaval de Romans: de la Chandeleur au mercredi des Cendres, 1579–1580 (Paris, 1979); M. Agulhon, La République au village: Les populations du Var de la Révolution à la IIe République (Paris, 1970); M. Vovelle, Piété baroque et déchristianisation en Provence au XVIIIe siècle (Paris, 1973); Vovelle, Die Französische Revolution—soziale Bewegung und Umbruch der Mentalitäten (Munich, 1982); J. L. Flandrin, Familles: parenté, maison, sexualité dans l’ancienne société (Paris, 1976); A. Corbin, Le Miasme et la jonquile: l’odorat et l’imaginaire social, XVIII—XIXe siècles (Paris, 1982); as a comprehensive global synthesis, P. Ariès, G. Duby, et al., eds., Histoire de la vie privée, 5 vols. (Paris, 1985–87); English translation: A History of Private Life, 5 vols. (Cambridge, Mass., 1988–91); Naturally there are many historians in a number of countries, including the Federal Republic, who have worked directly or indirectly in the field of the history of mentalities: along with the authors of the present volume, one can point in Germany to the work of A. Borst, W. Blessing, A. Imhof, A. Nitschke, N. Schindler, R. Schulte, W. Schulze, R. Sprandel, R. Reichardt, and R. Vierhaus. It is not possible to deal with their work within the confines of the present paper. 13. M. Vovelle, Idéologies et Mentalités (Paris, 1982), 11. 14. Restrictions of space do not permit me to examine here the possible conse-

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quences of this boom, brought about in part by the activities of the media and the book market, for the operative power of the concept of mentality. 15. R. Mandrou, “Histoire/L’histoire des mentalités,” in Encyclopaedia Universalis, vol. 9 (Paris, 1971), 436. 16. J. Le Goff, “Les mentalités. Une histoire ambiguë,” in Faire d’histoire, ed. J. Le Goff and P. Nora, vol. 3 (Paris, 1974), 80. 17. Ibid. 18. See, for example, F. Furet, “Die Methoden der Sozialwissenschaften in der Geschichtsforschung und die ‘histoire totale,’ ” in Theorie der modernen Geschichtsschreibung, ed. R. Rossi (Frankfurt am Main, 1987), 167ff.; originally published in Furet, L’Atelier de l’Histoire (Paris, 1982). 19. See also Burke, “Strengths and Weaknesses”; G. Mairet, Le Discours et l’historique: Essai sur la représentation historienne du temps (Paris, 1974); R. Robin and M. Grenon, “Pour la déconstruction d’une pratique historique,” Dialectiques, no. 10–11 (1975): 5–32; Vovelle, Idéologies; M. A. Gismondi, “The ‘Gift of Theory’: A Critique of the ‘Histoire des Mentalités,’ ” Social History 10 (1985): 211–30; Dosse, L’Histoire en miettes. 20. C. Ginzburg, “Mentalität und Ereignis. Über die Methode bei Marc Bloch,” in his Spurensicherungen. Über verborgene Geschichte, Kunst und soziales Gedächtnis (Berlin, 1983), 97–103, esp. 104f. 21. Lefebvre, Le Problème de l’incroyance; M. Bakhtin, Rabelais and His World (Bloomington, 1984 [1965]). 22. C. Ginzburg, Der Käse und die Würmer. Die Welt eines Müllers um 1600 (Frankfurt am Main, 1979 [1976]), 19; English translation: The Cheese and the Worms: The Cosmos of a Sixteenth-Century Miller (Baltimore, 1980). 23. Of works by L. Lévy-Bruhl, see Primitive Mentality (London, 1923); on his reception, see, for example, Lefebvre, Le Problème de l’incroyance, 404ff.; expanded version of same essay: Amour sacré, Amour profane: Autour de l’Heptaméron (Paris, 1971 [1944]), 281ff. 24. See L. Febvre, Combats pour l’histoire (Paris, 1953), 201ff., 370ff.; M. Bloch, review of C. Blondel, Introduction à la psychologie collective (1928), in Revue Historique 160 (1929): 398f. On the importance of Wallon for the history of the discipline, see E. Roudinesco, La Bataille de cent ans. Histoire de la psychanalyse en France, vol. 2 (Paris, 1986), 81ff., 156ff. 25. Bloch, Les Rois thaumaturges, 417f. 26. Ibid., 419f. 27. Ibid., 420. One of the doctors was supposedly Bloch’s brother, to whom he also was indebted for the topic of the study (as F. Braudel reported); see F. Braudel, “Bloch, Marc,” in International Encyclopedia of the Social Sciences, vol. 2 (1968), 92. 28. Bloch, Les Rois thaumaturges, 420, 429. 29. M. Plon, “De ‘l’hérésie physiologique’ à ‘l’obscénité scientifique’: L’innomable dans l’histoire,” Studies in the History of Psychology and the Social Sciences 4 (1987): 233; Plon, “ ‘Au delà’ et ‘en deçà’ de la suggestion,” Frénésie, no. 8 (1989): 89–114. 30. Plon, “De ‘l’hérésie physiologique.’ ” 31. Ibid. Plon refers among others to the classic study by E. H. Kantorowicz,

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The King’s Two Bodies: A Study in Medieval Political Theology (Princeton, N.J., 1957). It is striking that the importance of this book has been emphasized in France for many years, while in Germany it is virtually unknown beyond circles of medievalists. A German translation of the work was finally published in 1990. 32. Plon, “De ‘l’hérésie,’ ” 235. 33. J. Le Goff, “Histoire des sciences et histoire des mentalités,” Revue de Synthèse 104 (1983): 413. See likewise Le Goff’s preface to the new edition of Bloch’s Les Rois thaumaturges, i–xxxviii, esp. xviii. This need to stress his distance from psychoanalysis is all the more surprising since Le Goff is one of the historians who has ventured furthest out into the territory of the imaginary (cf. J. Le Goff, L’Imaginaire médiéval [Paris, 1985]). 34. For a critical discussion of common biases vis-à-vis psychoanalysis and its application in historiography, see P. Gay, Freud for Historians (New York and Oxford, 1985). 35. M. de Certeau, L’Ecriture de l’histoire (Paris, 1975); de Certeau, Histoire et psychanalyse entre science et fiction (Paris, 1987). 36. Along with the book by Gay already mentioned, on this see A. Besançon, Histoire et expérience du moi (Paris, 1971); H.-U. Wehler, ed., Geschichte und Psychoanalyse (Cologne, 1971); S. Friedländer, Histoire et Psychanalyse (Paris, 1975); D. Blasius, “Psychohistorie und Sozialgeschichte,” Archiv für Sozialgeschichte 17 (1977): 383–403. 37. See A. Besançon, Le Tsarévitch immolé (Paris, 1967); Besançon, Histoire et expérience, and as a farewell to psychoanalysis, Besançon, “De Gibbon à Freud et retour,” L’Arc, no. 72 (1978): 4–8. 38. J. Favret-Saada, Les Mots, la mort, les sorts: la sorcellerie dans le bocage (Paris, 1977). 39. P. Boutry and J. Nassif, Martin l’Archange (Paris, 1985). 40. See C.-L. Maire, “Histoire et psychanalyse: le malentendu,” L’Histoire, no. 92 (1986): 90–93, as well as the reply by P. Boutry, ibid., no. 95 (1986): 96–97. The survey conducted by the periodical L’Ane (no. 25 [1986]: 44f.) provides interesting insight into the relation of some younger historians to psychoanalysis. 41. P. Ariès, Essais sur l’histoire de la mort en Occident (Paris, 1975); English translation: Western Attitudes toward Death from the Middle Ages to the Present (London, 1976); German translation: Studien zur Geschichte des Todes im Abendland (Munich, 1976), 213. 42. Vovelle, Idéologies, 87. 43. See J.-B. Fages, Geschichte der Psychoanalyse nach Freud (Frankfurt am Main, Berlin, and Vienna, 1981), 56ff. 44. P. Ariès, “L’histoire des mentalités,” in Le Goff, Nouvelle Histoire, 423. 45. Ariès, Studien, 213. 46. See especially the studies by A. Dupront, for example, his article “le monde en devenir,” Encyclopédie Française, vol. 20 (1959). An explicit experimental application of the theory of archetypes can be found in O. Reshef, Guerre, mythes et caricature: Au berceau d’une mentalité française (Paris, 1984).

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47. F. Braudel, Grammaire des civilisations (Paris, 1987 [1966]). In later books by Braudel, as well, there are allusions to the theories of C. G. Jung. 48. See, for example, G. Duby and G. Lardreau, Dialogues (Paris, 1980), 102; Le Goff, L’Imaginaire, v–vi; see also the discussion about the theory of the collective unconscious in connection with an essay by C. Ginzburg, “Freud, der Wolfsmann und die Werwölfe,” Zeitschrift für Volkskunde 82 (1986): 189–99, 200–25. 49. B. Obrist, Les débuts de imagerie alchimique (XIVe–XVe siècles) (Paris, 1982), 15ff. 50. Vovelle, Idéologie, 97. 51. Ibid. 52. J. Le Goff, “Au moyen-âge: temps de l’église et temps du marchand,” Annales 15 (1960): 417–33; German translation: “Zeit der Kirche und Zeit des Händlers im Mittelalter,” in Honneger, Schrift und Materie, 393. 53. See Bloch, Société féodale, 393ff.; on the ambivalent attitude of the early Annales toward Marxism, see J. R. Suratteau, “Les historiens, le marxisme et la naissance de Annales: l’histographie marxiste vers 1929: un mythe?” in Au berceau des Annales, ed. C.-O. Carbonnell and G. Livet (Toulouse, 1983), 231–45. 54. See, for example, R. Mandrou, Classes et luttes de classes en France au début du XVIIe siècle (Florence, 1965); F. Braudel, Civilisation matérielle et capitalisme (Paris, 1979), 509; Le Goff, L’Imaginaire, 344. 55. For an excellent sketch of the history of the Marxist concept of class, see E. Balibar’s “Classes” and “Culte des classes,” in Dictionnaire critique du marxisme, 2d ed. (Paris, 1986). On the role of Marxist concepts in the work of Annales historians such as Vilar, Duby, Le Goff, et al., see G. Bois, “Marxisme et histoire nouvelle,” in Le Goff, Nouvelle Histoire, 375–93. 56. F. Braudel, “En guise de conclusion,” Review 1 (1978): 256f. See also his highly critical interview in L’Histoire, no. 48 (1982): 70–76. 57. A. Bruguière, “La notion de ‘mentalités’ chez Marc Bloch et Lucien Febvre: deux conceptions, deux filiations,” Revue de Synthèse 104 (1983): 343f. F. Braudel, the closest pupil and successor of L. Febvre as editor of the Annales, noted toward the end of his life that although he knew Febvre far better, intellectually he felt his place was more “in the lineage of Marc Bloch”; see his interview in L’Histoire, no. 48 (1982): 76. 58. Cf. U. Dierse, “Ideologie,” in Historisches Wörterbuch der Philosophie, ed. J. Ritter et al., vol. 4 (1976), col. 158–85; Dierse, “Ideologie,” in Geschichtliche Grundbegriffe, ed. O. Brunner, W. Conze, and R. Koselleck, vol. 3 (Stuttgart, 1982), 131–69; G. Labica, “Idéologie,” in Dictionnaire critique du marxisme. 59. Cf. the material in R. Geier, “Zur Semantik und Verwendung der Wörter Ideologie und Ideologe im Sprachgebrauch der DDR und BRD,” in Linguistische Untersuchungen zur Sprache der Gesellschaftswissenschaften, ed. W. Fleischer (Leipzig, 1977), 136–98. 60. M. Foucault, “Vérité et pouvoir,” in L’Arc 70 (1977): 20–21; English translation: “Truth and Power,” in Power/Knowledge: Selected Interviews and Other Writings, 1972–1977, ed. Colin Gordon (New York, 1980), 109–33. 61. P. Veyne, Der Eisberg der Geschichte (Berlin, 1981), 40.

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62. G. Eley, “Some Recent Tendencies in Social History,” in International Handbook of Historical Studies, ed. G. G. Iggers and H. T. Parker (Westport, Conn., 1979), 63. 63. G. Roche, “Un mouvement des nouvelles Annales en RFA?” Revue d’Allemagne 11 (1979): 417f. 64. Cf. esp. R. Robin, La Société française en 1789: Semur-en-Auxois (Paris, 1970); Robin, “Vers une histoire des idéologies,” Annales historiques de la Révolution Française 43 (1971): 285–308; Vovelle, Idéologie; G. Duby, “Histoire sociale et idéologie des variétés,” in Faire de l’Histoire, ed. J. Le Goff and P. Nora, vol. 1 (Paris, 1974), 203–30. 65. Cf. L. Althusser, Pour Marx (Paris, 1965); German translation: Für Marx (Frankfurt am Main, 1968); English translation: For Marx (London, 1969); Althusser and E. Balibar, Lire le Capital, (Paris, 1965); English translation: Reading Capital (London, 1970). On Althusser’s neo-Marxist approach, whose critique of the philosophy of history was often too quickly misinterpreted as an “attack on history” (A. Schmidt), see, inter alia, S. Karsz, Théorie et Politique: Louis Althusser (Paris, 1974); K. Thieme et al., Althusser zur Einführung (Hannover, 1982); G. Elliott, Althusser—the Detour of Theory (London, 1987). On interest in Althusser internationally, see the special number of Dialectiques, no. 15–16 (1976) devoted to his work as well as special issues of KultuRRevolution, no. 20 (1988), and Economy and Society (1988). 66. See, for example, Robin, La Société française; Duby, Guerriers et paysans; N. Poulantzas, Pouvoir politique et classes sociales (Paris, 1971); N. Poulantzas, Fascisme et dictature (Paris, 1974); M. Godelier, Rationalité et irrationalité en économie (Paris, 1971); M. Godelier, Horizonts marxistes en anthropologie (Paris, 1973); E. Terray, Le Marxisme devant les sociétés “primitives” (Paris, 1969). In the Federal Republic, one can find traces of this approach, for example, in H.-G. Haupt, Nationalismus und Demokratie. Zur Geschichte der Bourgeoisie im Frankreich der Restauration (Frankfurt am Main, 1974); G. Ziebura, Frankreich 1789–1870. Entstehung einer bürgerlichen Gesellschaftsformation (Frankfurt am Main and New York, 1979). 67. On this, see especially Mairet, Le Discours et l’historique, 24 and passim. In contrast, P. Vilar, the most important Marxist historian associated with the Annales, has stressed in a subtle critique that the Annales were actually “further along” than Althusser and that his overly abstract concepts, especially in their theorizing exaggeration, tended to act as an impediment to research among his followers; Vilar, “Histoire marxiste, histoire en construction: essai de dialogue avec Althusser,” Annales E.S.C. 28 (1973): 165–98; English translation: New Left Review 80 (July–August 1973): 65, 106. On the background to this article, see my interview with Vilar in Kommune 5, no. 7 (1987): 62–68. And for an attempt to continue the “dialogue” begun by Vilar, see my “Althusser and Annales History—An Impossible Dialogue?” in The Althusserian Legacy, ed. E. A. Kaplan and M. Sprinker (London, 1993), 81–98. 68. See especially Althusser, Für Marx, 176ff; Althusser, “Idéologies et appareils idéologiques d’Etat,” in his Positions: 1964–1975 (Paris, 1976); Althusser, Philosophie et philosophie spontanée des savants (Paris, 1974). On his position in the history of theory, see G. Lock, The State and I: Hypotheses on Juridical

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and Technocratic Humanism (Den Haag, 1981); F. O. Wolf, “Some Pitfalls of the Theory of Ideology,” in Rethinking Ideology (Berlin, 1983), 26–31. 69. Cf. Labica, “Idéologie”; E. Balibar, “Idéologie et conception du monde,” in Epistémologie et Matérialisme, ed. O. Bloch (Paris, 1986), 147–75. 70. M. Pêcheux, Les Vérités de la Palice. Linguistique, sémantique, philosophie (Paris, 1975), 142 and passim; English translation: Language, Semantics and Ideology: Stating the Obvious (London, 1982). 71. Althusser thus differs from those Marxist approaches that posit an “overcoming” of the “false consciousness” of ideology in “transparent” relations, or that consider such a process possible; see, for example, A. Schmidt, “Der strukturalistische Angriff auf die Geschichte,” in Schmidt, ed., Beiträge zur marxistischen Erkenntnistheorie (Frankfurt am Main, 1969), 199ff. In this tradition of the Frankfurt School, M. Vester has spoken quite explicitly about a “U-turn of alienation . . . which the old social movements had to pass through” and that will come to an end in about the year 2000; see his “Proletariat und neue soziale Bewegungen,” in Großstadt und neue soziale Bewegungen, ed. P. Grottian and W. Nelles (Basel, 1983), 19. The “Projekt Ideologietheorie,” which, drawing on Gramsci, Althusser, and W. F. Haug, produced important studies exploring the way historical ideologies function, also remained caught up in similar premises regarding the philosophy of history; see Projekt Ideologietheorie, Theorien über Ideologie (Berlin, 1979), 116ff. For a critical view of this, see Wolf, “Some Pitfalls.” 72. See, for example, the “autobiographical” comments by R. Robin and J. Guilhaumou, “L’identité retrouvée,” Dialectiques, no. 15–16 (1976): 37–42 (special number on “Althusser”). This “liberating effect,” based on the general discrediting of Marxist thought and the personal fate of Louis and Hélène Althusser, is later easily forgotten; see K. S. Karol, “Die Tragödie der Althussers,” Prokla 43 (1981): 141–45. Althusser, who specifically wished to rid Marxism of its quasi-religious character as a worldview, is now portrayed as a dogmatist. R. Chartier, in an interview, took issue with this attempt to demonize him in retrospect: “His ‘return to Marx’ never exercised a paralyzing effect on me; on the contrary, it meant a powerful opening up toward a historiography that was oriented in terms of problems,” in Magazine littéraire, no. 242 (May 1987): 93. 73. On this, see D. Lecourt, Dissidence ou révolution? (Paris, 1978), 71ff.; G. Plumpe and C. Kammler, “Wissen ist Macht. Über die theoretische Arbeit Michel Foucaults,” Philosophische Rundschau 27 (1980): 216; J. Link, “Warum Foucault aufhörte, Symbole zu analysieren: Mutmaßungen über ‘Ideologie’ und ‘Interdiskurs,’ ” in Anschlüsse. Versuche über Michel Foucault, ed. G. Dane et al. (Tübingen, 1985), 105–14. 74. Along with studies cited in nn. 64, 66, 79, and 80, cf. for the social sciences in France: C. Baudelot and R. Establet, L’Ecole capitaliste en France (Paris, 1971); R. Robin, Histoire et Linguistique (Paris, 1973); Robin, ed., Langage et idéologies (Paris, 1973); R. Balibar, Le Français national (Paris, 1974); Balibar, Les Français fictifs (Paris, 1974); M. Plon, “On the Meaning of the Notion of Conflict and Its Study in Social Psychology,” European Journal of Social Psychology 4 (1975): 389–436; Plon, La Théorie de jeux: une politique imaginaire (Paris, 1976); J.-P. Poitou, “Le Pouvoir et l’exercise du pouvoir,” in Introduction à la

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psychologie sociale, ed. S. Mosovici, vol. 2 (Paris, 1973), 45–73; Poitou, La Dynamique des groupes: une idéologie au travail (Paris, 1978); E. Cros, Théorie et pratique sociocritiques (Montpellier and Paris, 1983). The approach in F. Châtelet, ed., Histoire des idéologies, 3 vols. (Paris, 1978), is also influenced by Althusser’s concept of ideology. On the English reception, see among others G. Therborn, Science, Class and Society (London, 1976); Therborn, The Ideology of Power and the Power of Ideology (London, 1980); CCCS, On Ideology (London, 1978); P. Hirst, On Law and Ideology (London, 1979); R. Rudé, Ideology and Popular Protest (London, 1980); E. Laclau, Politics and Ideology in Marxist Theory (London, 1977). See also the journals Economy & Society, Screen, and Ideology & Consciousness. On the productive reception and utilization in the Federal Republic, which characteristically occurred within the field of literary studies in particular, see, for example, R. Gasché, Die hybride Wissenschaft. Zur Mutation des Wissenschaftsbegriffs bei Emile Durkheim und im Strukturalismus von Claude Lévi-Strauss (Stuttgart, 1973); W. Hagen, Die Schillerverehrung in der Sozialdemokratie. Zur ideologischen Formation proletarischer Kulturpolitik vor 1914 (Stuttgart, 1977); K.-H. Ladeur, Rechtssubjekt und Rechtsstruktur (Gießen, 1978); K.-M. Bogdal, Schaurige Bilder. Der Arbeiter im Blick des Bürgers am Beispiel des Naturalismus (Frankfurt am Main, 1978); J. Link, Die Struktur des Symbols in der Sprache des Journalismus (Munich, 1978); Link, Elementare Literatur und generative Diskursanalyse (Munich, 1983); Link and U. Link-Heer, Literatursoziologisches Propädeutikum (Munich, 1980); P. Schöttler, Die Entstehung der “Bourses du Travail”. Sozialpolitik und französischer Syndikalismus am Ende des 19. Jahrhunderts (Frankfurt am Main and New York, 1982; French translation: Naissance des bourses du travail: un appareil idéologique d’Etat à la fin du XXe siècle [Paris, 1985]). 75. Cf. Robin, Société française; Robin, “Vers une histoire des idéologies”; Robin, Histoire et Linguistique; Robin, “La nature de l’Etat à la fin de l’ancien Régime: formation sociale, Etat et transition,” Dialectiques, no. 1 (1973); J. Guilhaumou, “L’idéologie du Père Duchesne; analyse de champs sémantiques,” in Robin, ed., Langage et idéologies; see also the literature by the same authors cited below in the section on discourse. 76. Vovelle, Idéologies, 86. 77. This controversy raged in 1976 in the pages of La Pensée: M. Grenon and R. Robin, “A propos de la polémique sus l’ancien Régime et la Révolution: Pour une problématique de la transition,” La Pensée (1976); reply by A. Soboul, ibid., 31–35. See also Robin, “La nature de l’Etat.” 78. See G. Duby, “Histoire-société-imaginaire,” Dialectiques, no. 10–11 (1975): 114; Duby, “L’exercice de la liberté,” Magazine littéraire, no. 189 (1982): 23; Duby and Lardreau, Dialogues, 119. It would be interesting to explore this reference in greater detail using books by Duby. 79. G. Noiriel, Longwy. Immigrants et prolétaires 1880–1980 (Paris, 1984), esp. 196ff. 80. See Stuart Hall and Tony Jefferson, eds., Resistance through Rituals: Youth Subcultures in Postwar Britain (London, 1976); J. Clarke et al., eds., Working Class Culture: Studies in History and Theory (London, 1979); German translation: Jugendkultur als Widerstand (Frankfurt am Main, 1979); P. Willis,

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Profane Culture (London, 1978); German translation: Spaß am Widerstand (Franfurt am Main, 1982); R. Johnson et al., Making Histories (London, 1982); G. Stedman Jones, “Working-Class Culture and Working-Class Politics in London, 1870–1900: Notes on the Remaking of the English Working-Class,” in Journal of Social History 7 (1974): 460–503; Stedman Jones, Klassen, Politik und Sprach (on the English discussion, see my interview with Stedman Jones and the introduction, ibid.); on the CCCS (Birmingham), see Graeme Turner, British Cultural Studies: An Introduction (London, 1992), 76–80 and passim. Cf. also my own attempt to apply the Althusserian concepts of “practical ideology” and “ideological state apparatus” to materials in social history in Die Entstehung der “Bourses du Travail.” 81. On this difference between Althusser and Gramsci, see E. Balibar, “Appareil,” in Dictionnaire critique du marxisme, vol. 1, 71–81. 82. I actually think it is questionable whether Bourdieu’s concept of “habitus” permits a differentiated theory of social-historical forms of practice; see P. Bourdieu, Esquisse d’une Théorie de la Pratique (Geneva, 1972: chap. 1 n.10); see also the article, with extensive bibliography, by F. Héran, “La seconde nature de l’habitus,” Revue française de sociologie 28 (1987): 385–416. While Althusser (a fact often overlooked) only formulated philosophical theses that overturn customary topoi, but are not yet meant to represent an analysis, Bourdieu has developed a system to explain society that is increasingly more closed and unified—one in which, as in the case of Hegel, everything has always had its specific “place.” The concept of habitus functions there as a kind of universal key of behavioral psychology. In my view, it fails to pay proper attention to the surprises of the unconscious and the class struggle. Since the concept carries in itself its own negation, it is, like the Hegelian notion of the “cunning of reason,” more suited for an after-the-fact explanation of the factual than for an analysis of contingent processes of change, in which the shaping and decisive factor is not the socialized and habitualized single individual, but rather complex, collective forms of practice. For a critical discussion of Bourdieu’s approach, see, inter alia, J.-P. Poitou, “Critique de la théorie d l’habitus,” Technologies, Idéologies et Pratiques 2, no. 1 (1980): 71–97; Collectif “Révoltes logiques,” L’empire du sociologue (Paris, 1984); T. Laugstien, “Bourdieus Theorie ideologischer Diskurse,” Das Argument 26 (1984): 887–93. See likewise my concrete criticism of a study in the sociology of law inspired by Bourdieuian concepts, “Französische Arbeitsgerichte in historischer und soziologischer Perspektive,” Demokratie und Recht 11 (1983): 67– 77. 83. On this, see the interesting critique, in a Lacanian spirit, of S. Zizek, “ ‘. . . der Automat, der den Geist, ohne daß er es merkt, mit sich zieht,’ ” Wo es war, no. 2 (1986): 147–65. 84. See the studies already cited by Balibar, Pêcheux, Plon, and Robin. 85. For understanding M. Pêcheux’s (1938–83) approach, the interview M. Pêcheux and F. Gadet, “Sprachtheorie und Diskursanalyse in Frankreich,” Das Argument 24 (1982): 386–99, is useful. For a complete bibliography of his writings, see Mots, no. 13 (1986): 195–200. 86. C. Laroche, P. Henry and M. Pêcheux, “La sémantique et la coupure saussurienne: langue, langage, discours,” Langages, no. 24 (1971): 102f. The text

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is contained in a new anthology of Pêcheux’s writings edited by D. Maldidier, L’Inquiétude du discours (Paris, 1990). 87. On this, see F. Gadet, “Théorie linguistique et réalité langagière,” Langages, no. 46 (1977): 59–89; J. Link, “Literaturanalyse als Interdiskursanalyse. Am Beispiel des Ursprungs literarischer Symbolik in der Kollektivsymbolik,” in Diskursanalyse und Literaturwissenschaft, ed. Fohrmann and Müller, 284–306, esp. 288. 88. See Pêcheux, Les Vérités de la Palice, 127ff., and in German, Pêcheux, “Zu rebellieren und zu denken wagen! Ideologien, Widerstände, Klassenkampf,” KultuRRevolution, no. 5 (1984): 61–65; no. 6 (1984): 63–66. On the productiveness of this distinction between “counteridentification” (symmetrical reversal of a discursive figure) and “disidentification” (asymmetrical breaking open of a discursive figure) for historical-political analyses, see, for example, M. Daxner and B. Kehm, “Im diskursiven Spagat. Über die Schwierigkeiten des DGB, Vater Marx zu begraben,” KultuRRevolution, no. 11 (1986): 51–56; G. Hauck, “ ‘Armeekorps auf dem Weg zur Sonne.’ Einige Bemerkungen zur kulturellen Selbstdarstellung der Arbeiterbewegung,” in Fahnen, Fäuste, Körper. Symbolik und Kultur der Arbeiterbewegung, ed. D. Petzina (Essen, 1986), 69–89. See also my own attempts: “Friedrich Engels und Karl Kautsky als Kritiker des ‘Juristen-Sozialismus,’ ” Demokratie und Recht 8 (1980): 3–25, esp. 18ff.; English translation: International Journal of the Sociology of Law 14 (1986): 1–32; Die Entstehung der “Bourses du Travail.” [In Althusserian analysis, “interpellation” of individuals in ideology is a process whereby they are called upon to identify with certain “subject positions,” a process through which identities are constructed and structured.—TRANS.] 89. Pêcheux, “Zu rebellieren,” no. 6, 64. 90. That this could indeed change is indicated by the intensive interest in England, where numerous studies were published about Pêcheux. In the Federal Republic, I am familiar only with the discussions that have appeared to date in the journals Das Argument and KultuRRevolution. 91. In the years before his tragic sudden death, Pêcheux directed the research section “Analyse de discours et lecture d’archive” at the Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique (French national research center) in which numerous historians and sociologists also participated (including Ansart, Guilhaumou, Robin, Vidal, Vovelle, et al.). On this, see one of his last published studies, “Über die Rolle des Gedächtnisses als interdiskursives Material. Ein Forschungsprogramm im Rahmen der Diskursanalyse und Archivlektüre,” in Das Subjekt des Diskurses, ed. M. Geier and H. Woetzel (Berlin, 1983), 50–58 (published later in the French original: “Lecture et mémoire: projet de recherche,” in L’Inquiétude du discours, 285–93), as well as the special issues of LINX (no. 10, 1984), Mots (no. 9, 1984), and esp. Langages (no. 81, 1986). 92. This difference deserves to be stressed, since it now often happens that the two concepts are confused with one another or combined thoughtlessly, which can lead only to disappointing results and a rapid attrition; see, for example, U. A. J. Becher, Geschichtsinteresse und historischer Diskurs. Ein Beitrag zur französischen Geschichtswissenschaft im 19. Jahrhundert (Stuttgart, 1986). 93. Cambridge, 1983. A slightly altered version was published in German in

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1988: Klassen, Politik und Sprache. On the problems and the reception of Stedman Jones’s approach, see my introduction and the interview with the author in the German version. 94. Naturally, it is completely legitimate to interpret sources in a “traditional” manner. Even an intuitive form of the history of concepts can yield highly interesting results. Everything depends on the aims of the research. But if one introduces the principle of “language analysis” in a text programmatically and in contrast with previously accepted procedures of textual interpretation, then one has to raise the question of its utility; in the case of Stedman Jones’s analysis of the Chartist press in the 1830s and 1840s, I believe it would have been more profitable if the author had proceeded systematically, and perhaps even had used quantitative methods. 95. On this in greater detail, see my “Sozialgeschichtliches Paradigma,” 159ff. 96. L. Febvre, Pour une histoire à part entière (Paris, 1962), 11–24, 325–29, 418–28, 649–58. See likewise Bloch’s reiterated remarks on “historical semantics,” for example, in Apologie pour l’histoire, 73ff. 97. A. Dupront, “Langage et histoire,” XIII International Congress of Historians (Moscow, 1970), 53. 98. On this, see Robin, Histoire et Linguistique. Fundamental in this regard were texts by M. Foucault and R. Barthes among others, such as Foucault, “What Is an Author?” in Language, Counter-Memory, Practice: Selected Essays and Interviews, ed. D. F. Bouchard (New York, 1977); Barthes, Sur Racine (Paris, 1963). On the spectrum of reception and utilization of such approaches, see the anthology by Fohrmann and Müller, eds., Diskursanalyse, and G. Schmid, ed., Die Zeichen der Historie. Beiträge zu einer semiologischen Geschichtswissenschaft (Vienna, Cologne, and Graz, 1986). 99. See the bibliographies by M. Clark, Michel Foucault, an Annotated Bibliograpy: Tool Kit for a New Age (New York, 1983), and J. Lagrange, “Les oeuvres de Michel Foucault,” Critique, no. 471–72 (1986): 942–62. Good introductions can be found in Plumpe and Kammler, “Wissen ist Macht,” C. Kammler, Michel Foucault. Eine kritische Analyse seines Werks (Bonn, 1986), and J. Rajchman, Michel Foucault: The Freedom of Philosophy (New York, 1985). 100. For an introduction, see D. Lecourt, Pour une critique de l’épistémologie (Bachelard, Canguilhem, Foucault) (Paris, 1972); M. Fichant and M. Pêcheux, Überlegungen zur Wissenschaftsgeschichte (Frankfurt am Main, 1977). 101. M. Foucault, L’archéologie du savoir (Paris 1969), 40; English translation: The Archaeology of Knowledge (New York, 1972). 102. Ibid., 215. 103. For an introduction to the various methods of discourse analysis, see D. Maingeneau, Initiation aux méthodes de l’analyse du discours (Paris, 1976); Robin, Histoire et Linguistique, 123–215 (with historical examples). The periodical Mots (1980– ) regularly publishes bibliographical information. 104. J. Dubois, Le vocabulaire politique et social en France de 1869 à 1872 (Paris, 1962); see also B. Vardar, Structure fondamentale du vocabulaire social et politique en France de 1815 à 1830 (Istanbul, 1973). 105. Robin, Société française. For a more detailed examination, see my review in Politische Vierteljahresschrift 16 (1975): 143–47. Further case studies by

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Robin: “ ‘Fief’ et ‘seigneurie’ dans le droit et l’idéologie juridique à la fin du XVIIIe siècle,” Annales historiques de la Révolution française 43 (1971); Robin and D. Maldidier, “Polémique idéologique et affrontement discursif en 1776: les grands édits de Turgot et les remonstrances du Parlament de Paris,” Le Mouvement Social, no. 85 (1973): 13–80; Robin, “Du spectacle au meurtre de l’évènement: reportages, commentaires et éditoriaux de presse à propos de Charléty (Mai 1968),” Annales E.S.C. 31 (1976): 552–88; Robin, “Los manuales de historia de la Tercera Republica Francesa,” in El discurso politico, ed. M. M. Toledo (Mexico City, 1980), 245–89. 106. J. Guilhaumou, “L’idéologie du ‘Père Duchesne’: les forces adjuvantes (14 juillet–6 septembre 1793),” Le Mouvement Social, no. 85 (1973): 81–116. For the large number of language analyses focusing on the French Revolution, see the bibliography by J. Guilhaumou, “Langue et discours pendant la Révolution Française,” Mots, no. 16 (1988): 177–90. 107. G. Miller, Le pousse-au-jouir du maréchal Pétain, with a foreword by R. Barthes (Paris, 1975). 108. A German counterpart is K. Theweleit’s pioneering study on “male fantasies” in the literature of the Freikorps: Male Fantasies, 2 vols. (Minnesota, 1988–89); on this, see inter alia L. Niethammer, “Male Fantasies: An Argument for and with an Important New Study in History and Psychoanalysis,” History Workshop Journal, no. 7 (1979): 176–86. In the meantime, psychoanalytical concepts have come to be used quite frequently in the Federal Republic in discourseanalytical research; see especially the literary studies by M. Schuller, A. Kittler, H. Gallas, and J. Kolkenbrock-Netz. 109. R. Reichardt, “Zur Geschichte politisch-sozialer Begriffe in Frankreich zwischen Absolutismus und Restauration,” Zeitschrift für Literaturwissenschaft und Linguistik 47 (1982): 52. 110. Ibid. as well as R. Reichardt, “Bastille,” in Reichardt and E. Schmitt, eds., Handbuch politisch-sozialer Grundbegriffe in Frankreich 1680–1820, no. 9 (Munich, 1987), 7–74; Reichardt and H.-J. Lüsebrink, “La ‘Bastille’ dans l’imaginaire social de la France du XVIIIe siècle (1774–1799),” Revue d’histoire moderne et contemporaine 30 (1983): 196–234. 111. Reichardt, “Zur Geschichte,” 58, emphases added. 112. Ibid., 59. Further studies by Reichardt: “Der ‘Honnête Homme’ zwischen höfischer und bürgerlicher Gesellschaft. Seriell-begriffsgeschichtliche Untersuchungen von ‘Honnêteté’—Traktaten des 17. und 18. Jahrhunderts,” Archiv für Kulturgeschichte 69 (1987): 341–70; “Revolutionäre Mentalitäten und Netze politischer Grundbegriffe in Frankreich 1789–1795,” in Die Französische Revolution als Bruch des gesellschaftlichen Bewußtseins, ed. R. Koselleck and R. Reichardt (Munich, 1988), 185–215. 113. [J. Link], “Stichwort ‘Interdiskurs,’ ” KultuRRevolution, no. 4 (1983): 66; see also Link, Elementare Literatur, 16 and passim. 114. See J. Link and W. Wülfing, eds., Bewegung und Stillstand in Metaphern und Mythen. Fallstudien zum Verhältnis von elementarem Wissen und Literatur im 19. Jahrhundert (Stuttgart, 1984), esp. the essays by Link and Drews and Gerhard; Link, “Die Revolution im System der Kollektivsymbolik. Elemente einer Grammatik interdiskursiver Ereignisse,” Aufklärung 1 (1986): 5–23; U.

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Gerhardt and Link, “Zum Anteil der Kollektivsymbolik an den Nationalstereotypen,” in Link and W. Wülfing, eds., Nationale Mythen und Symbole in der zweiten Hälfte des 19. Jahrhunderts, Stuttgart 1991, 16–52, as well as numerous articles in the journal KultuRRevolution, Zeitschrift für angewandte Diskurstheorie (1982– ). 115. By way of illustration, let me list the steps in the working procedure that is customary, for example, at the “Laboratoire d’études des textes politiques” in Saint-Cloud: (1) selection of the source corpus, (2) manual transfer of the texts to data carriers, (3) machine reading of these texts and the making of indexes of identical units (occurrences) (a) in alphabetical order and (b) in a “hierarchical” ordering (i.e, according to frequency), (4) lexicometric analysis proper (on the basis of the statistical norm related to the corpus, [a] the greater or lesser frequency distribution, (b) the cadence, and [c] the co-occurrence of specific words are calculated using mathematical probability models), (5) interpretation of results. See A. Geffroy and M. Tournier, “Le texte historique en machine,” Histoire moderne et contemporaine informatique, no. 4 (1984): 5–28. 116. M. Tournier, “Un vocabulaire ouvrier en 1848. Essai de léxicométrie,” thesis, Université Paris III, 1976 (an abstract under the same title is in Bulletin de Saint-Cloud [May 1976]: 30–37). Partial results have been published in several papers; see esp.: Tournier, “Le vocabulaire des pétitions ouvrières de 1848: étude des parentages statistiques,” in Robin, Histoire et Linguistique, 261–303; Tournier, “Le mot ‘peuple’ en 1848: désignant social ou instrument politique?” Romantisme 9 (1975): 6–20; Tournier, “Les mots conflits: l’example de ‘grève’ au milieu du XIXe siècle,” Le Français aujourd’hui 58 (1982): 39–48. 117. See the following literature surveys: J. Guilhaumou and D. Maldidier, “Langage,” in Le Goff, La Nouvelle Histoire, 304–8; J. Guilhaumou and D. Maldidier, “Courte critique pour une longue histoire: L’analyse du discours ou les (mal)leurres de l’analogie,” Dialectiques, no. 26 (1979): 7–23; M. Tournier, “Les vocabulaires politiques à l’étude, aujourd’hui (1962–1982),” Raison Présente, no. 62 (1982): 79–101. 118. Z. H. Harris, “Discourse Analysis,” Language 28 (1952): 1–30; German translation: “Textanalyse,” in Beschreibungsmethoden des amerikanischen Strukturalismus, ed. E. Bense et al. (Munich, 1976), 261–98. On the response and reception in France, see Pêcheux and Gadet, “Sprachtheorie und Diskursanalyse,” 389f. 119. J.-B. Marcellesi, Le Congrès de Tours (Décembre 1920). Etudes sociolinguistiques (Paris, 1971), with two important prefaces by E. Labrousse and J. Dubois. See also L. Guespin, ed., “Typologie du discours politique,” Langages, no. 41 (1976). 120. See A. Kriegel, Histoire du mouvement ouvrier français, 1914–1920: Aux origines du communisme français, 2 vols. (Paris and Den Haag, 1964); J. Charles et al., eds., Le Congrès de Tours. Texte intégral (Paris, 1980). 121. Guilhaumou and Maldidier, “Courte critique,” 14f. 122. For a comprehensive presentation, see M. Pêcheux et al., “Presentation de l’analyse automatique du discours (AAD 69): Théories, procédures, résultats, perspectives,” Mots, no. 4 (1982): 95–122. 123. See, for example, G. Gayot and M. Pêcheux, “Recherches sur le discours

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illuministe au 18e siècle: Louis-Claude de Saint-Martin et les ‘circonstances,’ ” Annales E.S.C. 26 (1971): 681–704; Pêcheux and J. Wesselius, “A propos du mouvement étudiant et des luttes de la classe ouvrière: trois organisations étudiantes en 1968,” in Robin, Histoire et Linguistique, 245–60; J.-J. Courtine, “Quelques problèmes théoriques et méthodologiques en analyse du discours: à propos du discours communiste adréssé aux chrétiens,” Langages, no. 62 (1981): 9–128; S. Bonnafous, “Le Congrès de Metz (1979) du Parti socialiste: Processus discursifs et structures léxicales à travers les motions Mitterand, Rocard et CERES,” Langages, no. 71 (1983): 3–123; P. Sériot, Analyse du discours politique soviétique (Paris, 1985). 124. Only a few examples can be mentioned from the vast body of literature. It would have been instructive to deal with several representative investigations in discourse analysis that treat the language of National Socialism, such as the important study by Utz Maas, “Als der Geist der Gemeinschaft eine Sprache fand”. Sprache im Nationalsozialismus. Versuch einer historischen Argumentationsanalyse (Opladen, 1984); the monograph, which also contains a lengthy bibliography, uses economical but effective means to carry out discourse-oriented text analyses, deconstructing the fascist mechanisms for creating meaning. However, this topic is part of an extensive and very specific field of research which deserves separate treatment. Further important studies: J.-P. Faye, Langages totalitaires (Paris, 1972); Projekt Ideologie-Theorie, Faschismus und Ideologie, 2 vols (Berlin, 1980); W. F. Haug et al., Die Faschisierung des bürgerlichen Subjekts (Berlin, 1986); Haug et al., Vom hilflosen Antifaschismus zur Gnade der späten Geburt (Berlin, 1987). 125. R. Robin, “L’Analyse du Discours entre la linguistique et les sciences humaines: l’éternel malentendu,” Langages, no. 81 (1986): 126; English translation in Sociocriticism, no. 2 (1985): 151–63. 126. Here, too, R. Robin struck out into unexplored territory by viewing her “identity” qua historian as problematic in a mixture of autobiography, fictional narrative, and reflection on the theory of history: Le Cheval blanc de Lénine ou l’histoire autre (Brussels, 1979); excerpts from this appear in her essay “Toward Fiction as Oblique Discourse,” Yale French Studies, no. 59 (1980): 230–42. Against this background, cf. likewise her thoughts on oral history in “Récit de vie, discours sociale et parole vraie,” Vingtième Siècle: Revue d’histoire, no. 10 (1986): 103–9; and her reflections on forms of historical memory: “Kollektives Gedächtnis und ‘Gedächtnisroman,’ ” KultuRRevolution, no. 20 (1988): 45–48. 127. There is already a copious literature on this discussion. See de Certeau, L’Ecriture de l’histoire; W. J. Mommsen, “Die Sprache des Historikers,” Historische Zeitschrift 238 (1984): 57–81; H. White, Metahistory: The Historical Imagination in 19th Century Europe (Baltimore, 1973); D. LaCapra, History and Criticism (Ithaca, 1987), as well as the publications of the Studiengruppe Theorie der Geschichte, esp. vols. 3–5 (Munich, 1979–1986). For a critique of White, see especially A. Momigliano, “L’Histoire à la l’âge des idéologies,” Le Débat, no. 23 (1983): 129–46. Various case studies reflect the “empirical” explosive nature of these questions, such as N. Z. Davis, The Return of Martin Guerre (Cambridge, Mass., 1983), and H. Medick, “Die sogenannte ‘Laichinger Hungerchronik’. Ein

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Beispiel für die ‘Fiktion des Faktischen’ in der Darstellung von Geschichte,” Schweizerische Zeitschrift für Geschichte 44 (1994): 105–19. 128. Negative positions on the concept of ideology were cited above. Conversely, however, the concept of mentality has also occasionally been rejected in favor of the concept of ideology. See, for example, R. Robin, “Langage et idéologies,” Le Mouvement Social, no. 85 (1973): 5. 129. See esp. Link and Link-Heer, Literatursoziologisches Propädeutikum, 280ff., as well as Link, “Über ein Modell synchroner Systeme”; U. Brieler et al., “Gramsci, Foucault und die Effekte der Hegemonie,” KultuRRevolution, no. 11 (1986): 60–66. 130. See, inter alia, C. Buci-Glucksmann, “Bloc Historique,” in Dictionnarie critique du marxisme; Buci-Glucksmann, Gramsci et l’Etat (Paris, 1975). 131. Link and his group term these two axes or planes of interlinkage the “social-historical block” and “formative-historical block” (formierend-historisch). But I do not think this is a happy terminological choice, and would reserve the concept of “block” for the coupling of the two levels.

4 HAVE WE COME ANY CLOSER TO ALLTAG? E V E R Y D A Y R E A L I T Y A N D W O R K E R S’ LIVES AS AN OBJECT OF HISTORICAL RESEARCH IN THE GERMAN DEMOCRATIC REPUBLIC Harald Dehne

I

T IS NOW some eight years since the publication by Jürgen Kuczynski of the first volume of his Geschichte des Alltags des deutschen Volkes, 1600 bis 1945; by 1982, all five volumes of the work had appeared.1 A supplementary volume of commentary, subtitled Nachträgliche Gedanken, was published in 1985, containing a number of articles, lectures, and reviews in which the author underscores the importance of including everyday life within the purview of historiographic investigation and explores various dimensions of this theme.2 The publication of this history of everyday life was a notable event in the annals of German historiography. It is true that even before Kuczynski’s initiative, there had been a tradition of historical research in the German Democratic Republic in which disciplines as diverse as folklore/ popular culture studies (Volkskunde), cultural history, economic history, and the history of literature and art dealt with topics relevant to the study of quotidian reality, focusing on aspects of folk life, everyday life, mode of life, or culture. Yet the economic historian Jürgen Kuczynski was the first scholar to attempt a complex historiographic presentation of the daily life of the working classes in German history from a Marxist perspective. In numerous reviews of his work, justifiable critical objections have been raised regarding both his overall conception and his individual ques-

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tions and points. On the other hand, the seminal impact of this study on all scholars who themselves advocate a mode of historiography that is true to life (lebensnah) cannot be overlooked. The renewed discussion that Kuczynski’s work sparked on the need for historical investigations of everyday life in the GDR shed light on several dimensions of the situation. First, it became apparent that there was a lively popular interest among the East German population in vivid, engaging descriptions of the everyday life of past eras. Secondly, it was discovered that there were similar efforts afoot along the lines of inquiry into everyday life in other scholarly disciplines as well. Finally, Kuczynski’s rather rough survey on the basis of older printed materials underlined the need for developing in-depth, detailed research. Kuczynski felt that at that juncture, it was the task of other scholars to accept the challenge and continue with the work, while he himself turned his attention to other topics. What progress has been made in the GDR since then in developing a Marxist alltagsgeschichte in general, and historical investigations of the everyday life of workers in large urban areas in particular? Initially, two other survey works come to mind. The first of these was written in direct connection with Kuczynski’s pioneering study. Continuing the historiographic path he had blazed, the folk-life scholars Sigrid and Wolfgang Jacobeit published a three-volume Illustrierte Alltagsgeschichte des deutschen Volkes, 1550 bis 1945.3 Thanks to superb pictorial source material and rich written documentation, the work is able to present a highly vivid picture of the everyday life of various classes and social groups in German history. Two further important publications that appeared were based on a project focusing on the cultural history of the German working class. In 1983, a research team headed by the cultural historian Dietrich Mühlberg based at Humboldt University in East Berlin published the volume Arbeiterleben um 1900, rich with representative examples drawn mainly from Berlin life around the turn of the century.4 By contrast, the profusely illustrated volume Proletariat, which appeared in 1986, examines the essential aspects of proletarian lifeways in the context of the international development of the laboring classes.5 Both studies deal with everyday circumstances to the extent that they structure the main features of the proletarian mode of life. There has been a marked upsurge in scholarly interest in the history of working-class everyday life in the GDR over the past decade, and popular interest appears to be growing at an even more rapid pace. To a certain extent, the widespread felt need for research into everyday life can be derived from social practice* itself. In general, there are (at least) three * The terms ‘‘practice’’ and ‘‘praxis’’ will be used interchangeably here to render the German Praxis.—TRANS.

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main reasons in support of developing a specific research perspective oriented toward alltagsgeschichte in conjunction with Marxist studies on the history of the working class and the workers’ movement. First of all, the present generation, with its keen interest in historical questions, is demanding ever more precise and detailed answers from historians. There is a perceived need for complexly differentiated and detailed insights into the contradiction-ridden, often completely unexamined links between the objective historical course of events and its general conditions of development, on the one hand, and the daily life rhythms of the individuals affected, and the immediate demands of those rhythms, on the other. Sharpened historical consciousness, expanded competence grounded in well-founded knowledge, and the need for a sense of cultural and historical personal identity have galvanized a new interest in everyday life. People want to learn not only how (and why) a small number of persons acted “to make history” at particular junctures—that is, how the specific situations of daily life, immortalized in chronicles, were mastered. That is not enough. They also wish to have information on how earlier generations solved (or failed to cope with) the ordinary, seemingly insignificant, humdrum tasks of their lives, day in, day out. It is important in the GDR, if we are to fashion a vivid and true to life picture of history, to direct historiographic interest to the entire expanse of the everyday life of workers in past ages. Over the course of capitalist industrialization and urbanization, generations of proletarians appropriated experience and formed basic features in their life rhythms and individual reproductive behavior; these features and experiences later served as the preconditions for acquiring the individual ability to act and for crystallizing and molding class subjectivity. Secondly, activities in the sphere of alltagsgeschichte have increased in scope and intensity beyond the confines of institutionalized scholarship. The spectrum ranges from amateur researchers to the world of the arts and museums. Initially, there were initiatives in a handful of local museums that led to modest exhibitions on themes drawn from proletarian everyday life. In the meantime, Berlin not only has the standing exhibition “Großstadtproletariat. Zur Lebensweise einer Klasse” (Urban Proletariat: The Mode of Life of a Class), now in its eighth year, running at the Museum für Volkskunde, but can also point to the new Museum Berliner Arbeiterleben um 1900 (Museum for Berlin Working-Class Life around 1900), opened in 1987.6 All these museum-based activities have strengthened the demand for laying solid scholarly foundations to such work. Third and finally, research on the history of everyday life is also gaining in importance as efforts increase within the field of history to evolve a more differentiated understanding of the subjective side of the historical process. This is associated with internal logical developments within

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Marxist historiography itself, seeking to extend the scope of its socialhistorical analyses to encompass the natural inclusion of everyday life as a field of sustained inquiry. Thus, for example, the awareness has grown that more penetrating questions and more sensitive methods are required in order to arrive at accurate and well-founded knowledge about the “real life” of earlier generations of workers. Currently, the heightened sensitivity in research to incorporating dimensions of everyday history is manifest on two levels. The first involves political history: greater attention is now being paid to everyday circumstances in order to present a more accurate picture of the structure of specific historical situations.7 The second level encompasses the entire subfield of historical research on mode of life (Lebensweise): analyzed from a specific perspective, topics such as the living conditions, behavioral patterns, customs, traditions, and thought-forms of the working classes are explored, making them an object of inquiry for cultural, economic, and social history, folklore/folk life studies, regional history and cultural studies (Kulturwissenschaft).8 Precisely in this domain, new questions and methods hold out the promise of exciting new approaches to the historical everyday life of the workers. Since most of the projects are longer-term, the published literature to date still does not reflect this ongoing research. But there are numerous indications that research praxis focusing on everyday history is gaining in scope and breadth: Marxist studies in regional history, for example, are reclaiming everyday life as their own special preserve.9 Meanwhile, in the field of folklore and popular culture studies, it has become increasingly evident that the mode of life of urban workers must be made a specific theme within the array of long-standing traditions of research on the everyday life of the working classes and strata.10 Moreover, during the past decade, a research subfield has crystallized concentrating on the cultural history of the proletariat,11 and studies here have also begun to address aspects of working-class Alltag.12 Undoubtedly, it would be a bit premature on the basis of these developments—which still tend to be timid and quite scattered—to speak about a sweeping thrust in the direction of serious inquiry into the history of everyday life. Moreover, there is far less clarity among scholars about the theoretical prerequisites for a Marxist history of everyday life than in comparison, for example, with social history. In the latter field, Horst Handke has underscored certain basic theoretical points, though without specifically dealing with existing differences between social history and the history of everyday life.13 On occasion, the subfield of alltagsgeschichte has been called on to justify its existence, and has had to defend itself against skepticism and various objections. The extent to which scientific approaches to the historical everyday life of concrete individuals

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actually require the formal auspices of alltagsgeschichte certainly still remains an open question. Investigations in this area could also be basically categorized as “research on historical modes of life.” On the other hand, alltagsgeschichte has become an established and accepted term, and is utilized with the express intention of pushing inquiry forward in a rigorous manner proceeding from the concrete circumstances of individual life. More generally, the diverse research activities in the GDR that are advancing the development of a Marxist history of everyday life across a broad front—in each case in the form of discipline-specific studies—are in urgent need of theoretical underpinning and valuative generalization. For that reason, I would like to try to sketch out several central prerequisites derivable from Marxist social theory for the investigation of historical everyday life—in particular that of the urban proletariat.

Social Relations and the Individual’s Efforts to Cope with Everyday Life In contradistinction to the use of the word Alltag in colloquial language, the concept must have a positive definition in its scientific-scholarly application, and can be employed productively only in that technical sense. If the researcher falls back on the reservoir of private empirical experience—it being argued that any scholar has his or her own everyday life, and therefore is presumably well aware of the ultimate thrust of the scientific problem it poses—this certainly cannot be considered a sufficient basis for a theoretical approach to the everyday praxis of concrete historical subjects. However, the fact that “everyday life” is something everyone is familiar with, and that it exists “customarily,” “unquestionably,” indeed “self-evidently,” also blocks basic theoretical groundwork: it serves to obstruct the formation of a theoretical self-assurance detached from that life. The researcher embarking on explorations in the expanse of Alltag finds he or she is caught in a situation hardly more enviable than that of the early medieval philosopher Aurelius Augustine, who, when confronted with the problem of describing the phenomenon of “time,” commented rhetorically: “As long as no one asks me, it seems as though I know—but if I’m asked to explain it, then I’m stymied.”14 One special difficulty in the historiography of everyday life would appear to be associated with the problem of isolating the determinative social structures underlying the everyday circumstances of the members of the social groups examined in each respective case. Just as the historical subjects involved always have “immediate access only to a circumscribed, concrete realm of social reality” in everyday life,15 the scholar initially also has to grapple with a limited horizon of experience. Hence, a “sys-

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tematic” approach is especially important for the investigator—to avoid falling prey to the narrowness and bias (or the empirical diversity) of everyday life. The dialectic of the historical everyday life of social individuals is also shaped in ways that are specific to class and social group. However, research on everyday life is not carried out on the same plane of observation that explores the nature of the general motive forces driving the objective historical process, such as classes or revolutions. Investigations into alltagsgeschichte operate on a level different from that where the collective action that “propels history forward” is treated. Instead, the historiography of everyday life concentrates on the plane of microstructures, where it is possible to illuminate group-specific attributes and individual peculiarities—a level where historians can describe how the individual ability to act is acquired and implemented in praxis. A totally different vista is opened up: “the study of history as the history of the individual development of human beings.”16 It once again links the social plane with the individual one, accentuating in the final analysis the subjective side of history. This reversal in the angle and direction of approach “does not mean a return per se to the original empirical multiplicity of human actions; rather, it means elevating knowledge to a new stage where individual elements are grasped as a concrete expression of social realities.”17 In the GDR, scholars often have analytical recourse to the historicalmaterialistic conception of Lebensweise in order to make sense of the relations between the socioeconomic (structural) base of society and individual behavior; these relations are mediated in diverse fashion via the conditions for living which are present in a given society. However, the frequently quoted observation by Marx and Engels that the mode of production “is already a specific type of activity of these individuals, a specific way of expressing their life, a specific mode of life of the same [persons],”18 should alert us to exercise caution in keeping the various levels of abstraction separate. Thus, the philosopher Lothar Kühne was correct when he commented that it made “no sense to string together different levels in subjectivity, individuals, classes and society into a concept of mode of life, since the forms of subjectivity on different levels, although they are interrelated and mutually determine and characterize each other, are not of the same kind. A social class, qua social subject, does not eat, sing or sleep, and cannot enter into sexual relations, even with a class with which it is on friendly terms.”19 It thus appears justifiable to attribute a specific mode of life to a concrete society or class even at this high level of abstraction—but would it be equally meaningful to grant the existence of a specific Alltag to a class, or even a society? In theoretical terms, the Marxist concept of mode of life is sweeping and able to encompass the spectrum ranging from the basic economic

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structures of the process of social reproduction to individual everyday life. The most concrete level of the subject is relevant for historical inquiry into everyday life: the mode of life of concrete individuals within a defined class structure of society. The concept of “everyday life” aims at grasping this particular level—the most concrete in terms of space, time, and social structure—of the category “mode of life.” In empirical research, the notion of Alltag always refers directly to easily identifiable social units, that is, groups of individuals that have a specific connection spatially, temporally, and as a result of their specific forms of mutual relation and interaction within the matrix of their life activities. We have proceeded on the assumption that the concepts Alltag and Lebensweise basically have a similar functional meaning in the scholarlyscientific representation of concrete historical behavior. At this juncture, it appears instructive to try to characterize the differing emphases in the two concepts by their systematic comparison. Corresponding features, schematically simplified, can be disclosed in at least three ways by exploring the following three questions. First, proceeding from what social perspective and in what direction is concrete behavior (Realverhalten) described? This is also related to the question of the ultimate objective underlying the development of various conceptual constructs in scientific discourse. The concept of Lebensweise, evolved in Marxist theory on the level of macrostructures of societal development and proceeding from the mode of production, is primarily interested in the question of the social relations determined by and reproducing the relations of production: how are these social relations realized concretely (and sociotypically) by the (collective) subjects? The term is thus employed more frequently to emphasize the dimension of the objective course of history. In contrast, the concept of Alltag clearly reflects concrete behavior viewed from the angle of microhistorical perspective. It proceeds from the subjective side of historical development, from the plane of “real individuals,” underscoring this level of those directly involved and affected—the Betroffenen—the persons who act concretely in the historical process. Basic economic structures of society and class relations are not eo ipso a foreground focus of this approach; hence, the socioeconomic (and political) background of the concrete behavior represented must be introduced at a later point into the compass of scrutiny. Though the concept of Lebensweise also relates to the totality of living conditions which concretely mediate the basic structure of society, Alltag, per definitionem, encompasses only a limited segment of this totality. Secondly, what aspects are emphasized in the representation of concrete behavior? In its customary meaning, the category Lebensweise refers principally to law-governed regularities in observed social praxis: the characteristic, stable, socially binding (normative) dimensions of concrete

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behavior, that is, the more “supraindividual, socially typical patterns and regularities in the system of life activities.”20 By contrast, Alltag refers directly to the examination of empirical multiplicity, focusing specifically on what is special, unique, and contradictory. Lebensweise can even be conceptualized as objective culture when it is described in conjunction with time-tested, proven social praxes (such as when the latter are present in the mode of life of a given class). It then appears as an objectified collective experience (of classes, groups, generations, etc.)—an experience which individuals can appropriate (aneignen) and make their own in their life activity. However, Alltag tends to refer to the regular practices that have entered individual life in an empirically demonstrable form: as the manifold ways in which completed appropriation is expressed (i.e., routines, rituals, symbolic forms, etc.). In theoretical terms, the Marxist concept of Lebensweise is oriented more toward modes of behavior that are socially present and given as objective demands on action—and must be subjectively appropriated and internalized. It thus also encompasses “necessary” modes of behavior that individuals strive for socially, based on the social demands of reproduction—or forms that are only beginning to emerge into view. In a certain sense correlative to this, the concept of Alltag denotes only what was actually “accepted” subjectively from the array of “socially binding” objective demands on behavior—that is, what is practiced in actual fact and has been incorporated into the domain of habit. In this perspective, for example, personal meanings and individual experience play a specifying role. Third and finally, in what way are the forms of movement (e.g., linear vs. cyclical) of temporal sequences reflected? Once again, a simplifying juxtaposition indicates that the concept of Lebensweise is oriented more strongly in terms of the longer-term process and thus tends to depict linear sequences (“long waves”), while the concept of Alltag is more geared to the notion of cyclical sequences (“pulsing life”) and underscores the constantly recurrent routine of real concrete behavior. The linear manner of presentation of Lebensweise has the advantage that it can also describe large-scale lines of development. It can refer to the formation and genesis of basic characteristics of individual social behavior valid for an extended historical period. In so doing, this manner of presentation can also be used to highlight gradual or radical changes and shifts in life practice. On the other hand, the concept of Alltag makes it possible to interrogate even those social phenomena that normally are regarded as self-evident and often are not even consciously perceived: for example, reproductive activities guaranteeing survival and the impact of cultural-symbolic forms in daily life—that is to say, “frequently repeated, in part ritualized acts, removed from the sphere of constant direct obligatory awareness.”21 Of course, it should be noted at this juncture that the focus of research on

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the everyday world of social individuals in their historical context cannot treat everyday action, its rules and symbolic forms, solely in respect to the manner in which these are mastered and its formal structures—an orientation that approaches based on ethnomethodology, interaction theory, and phenomenological sociology tend to prefer.22 Yet specifically in conjunction with proletarian everyday life, another question must be raised: what potentialities does that life harbor for formation of the ability to be a historical subject? From a Marxist perspective, one of the tasks of historical-material research on quotidian life is the identification of potential latitude for individual action—and the social prospects for possible change—within the given complex of everyday life. In this regard, an idea proposed by the cultural historian Kaspar Maase regarding the “historically proven function” of the mode of life “in relieving the load,” a disburdening role that it exercises for broad areas of everyday life by dint of its own inertia, could prove quite suggestive methodologically: “Its unquestioning acceptance and repetition spares the individual the interminable processes of decision-making; in this way, it makes it subjectively possible for the first time to organize and control the baselines of one’s own way of life.”23 By combining the (relative) “security from [being startled by] surprises and what is unaccustomed,”24 guaranteed by the routine of everyday processes, with the social perspective of change in everyday life, it might also be feasible to avoid the pitfall pointed out by the folklorist Dieter Kramer as a “shortcoming of the usual brand of research on everyday life,” namely, that via the agency of Alltag, there is an “association with an element transcending time, something that has universal validity.”25 By juxtaposing the terms Lebensweise and Alltag, frequently employed as synonyms, I have attempted here to characterize divergent possibilities in the meaning of the two concepts. The two concepts appear to have differing emphases when it comes to the following: 1. The angle of orientation adopted: is the analytical point of departure the total complex of society or microstructural relations? 2. The generalizability of insights obtained: do they tend more toward accounting for regular, law-governed processes, or is the emphasis on the empirical diversity of individual social behavior? 3. The temporal form of movement of the sequences depicted: is it intended to delineate longer-term developmental processes within Lebensweise, or is the focus on those reproductive activities linked with the shorter cycles typical of Alltag?

At the same time, by way of an admonitory correction in perspective, it should not be forgotten that there are a number of correspondences and overlappings between mode of life and Alltag—despite the incongruence

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of the two concepts in regard to their choice of levels of orientation, referential systems, and epistemic goals. Lebensweise is an inclusive concept; Alltag has its place both within the concept of Lebensweise (on its most concrete level) as well as arrayed alongside it. It must be noted that Alltag reflects Lebensweise in respect to the reproductive activities that have flowed into human habits and can be empirically identified there. In culture-theoretical terms, one could say that the focus is on actually practiced individual social behavior: encoded in that behavior are indications of the manner in which people respond to the unavoidable (objective) demands on action in specific concrete terms, yet in tune with habit (ergo subjectively). It thus becomes clear why the referential domain of the concept of Alltag cannot be restricted a priori. The key arena of work cannot be excluded, nor can that of nonwork on Sundays and festivals.26 Of course, workers ate and dressed differently on Sundays, and often only really enjoyed their free time on such days, and so forth. Nonetheless, such “bright spots” also belong to the round of everyday life, even if they are expressive of quite different routines. The insight that the concept of Alltag is fundamentally oriented to include “all of life” compels the historian of everyday life to give a precise specification of his or her concrete object of investigation and associated epistemic interests. Some researchers handle this by resorting to an enumeration of the domains and activities that they regard as germane to research on everyday life.27 Other scholars in the GDR have attempted (albeit with differing degrees of precision) to specify possible relevant theoretical concepts—not in order to propose definitions, but rather to map out suggested areas for Marxist research on Alltag by underscoring key aspects of everyday reality. Thus, for example, Klaus Gößler, writing from a philosophical perspective, observed in (still) rather unspecific terms: “By the Alltag of a subject, we mean the totality of the manifestations of its social conditions and relations to other subjects. The human Alltag is, so to speak, the mode in which the essence of their social relations is manifested.”28 By contrast, the economist Hermann Lehmann directs the reader’s attention to the forms of movement of social development within everyday life and offers the following formulation, referring directly to Lenin’s fragment “On the Question of Dialectic”: everyday life should be viewed as “the development of contradictions in the most simple, common, fundamental, mass, everyday social conditions, observable billions of times over.”29 And the economic historian Jan Peters has stressed the following aspects of historical inquiry into everyday life: “scrutiny is directed here to conditions and human behavior realized historically on three levels: that of the

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social situation (a product of the material conditions for existence), thoughtful reflection on this situation (expressed in differing stages of social consciousness and mentalities) and (here moving in the direction of political history) the level of action (as a product of the awareness about one’s own situation manifested in socially relevant action).”30 Social relations are “activated” in everyday praxis; this primary insight guides us to a further question: what are the specific aspects of the formation of everyday life, and what is the nature of its class character?31 The problem that is posed is the theoretical understanding of the “mediating agencies” operative between (a) the basic economic relation between wage labor and capital, which structures all derived social relations in a fundamental manner as class relations, and (b) the concrete everyday practice of individual members of society. In that arena of everyday praxis, persons always act as social individuals, thus not only realizing prevailing social conditions, but at the same time reproducing them in their social behavior. In a very general sense, it is possible to maintain that everyday life constitutes a specific aspect of the mediation between individual and social spheres, since it is “the individual point of intersection between the subject and society.”32 In everyday life, the multifarious and contradictory processes of mediation between social and individual reproduction take on concrete shape; in its matrix, these processes are practiced in the form of habitual, highly personalized acts of social individuals. From the standpoint of the realization of reproductive demands, everyday life can thus be viewed as the “interface between social and individual reproduction.”33 At this point, there is an intersection between the objective demands on action resulting from the economic requirements of the process of social reproduction, on the one hand, and the needs for the individual reproduction of members of society, who stand within a network of specific social-structural relations, on the other. Here in the matrix of everyday life, individual contradictions of development, constantly generated anew, must be resolved by immediate practical human action. Subjective reactions to objective demands on action are unavoidable. They constitute necessary acts; to deal with them, certain routines, experience, proven rituals, and cultural-symbolic forms are necessary and useful. Within this process of appropriation (viewed subjectively), a certain scope or latitude for action unfolds, extending from the unquestioned, reproductive continuation of received routines to the radical transformation of circumstances. Between these poles lies the entire richly nuanced realm of creative modes of reaction, ranging from adaptation and refusal to intervention bent on modification. It is here one finds the “synchronisms of complaisance, detachment and resistance.”34 This is the arena for action that is constantly rediscovered, probed, explored (and at points

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even expanded) by acting individuals in their everyday practice. And it is this sphere of latitude for action which investigation into the history of everyday life attempts to map out within its historically concrete contextual field.

Is There a Way to Evaluate Individual Everyday Acts and Actions? The concept of everyday life cannot be employed in a value-free or classindifferent manner within historical-materialist social theory. Yet it is certainly possible to evaluate the everyday life of historically concrete individuals using quite different criteria. Thus, for example, the folklife specialist Wolfgang Jacobeit draws on the general historical process of evolution of human society when he proposes to assess everyday practice in terms of its contribution to social progress. In his view, “everyday life possesses the dimension of a fundamental category containing everything a human being requires for active participation in the process of historical progress as a social individual. Yet he can also change this content, via the self-created and hard-won possibilities for activity in the historical process—for enrichment or impoverishment, according to given circumstances. In this sense, it is imperative to recognize and explain all the influences coming from the outside, as it were—influences which, for their part, call forth active reactions and personal initiatives among the workers, their will to implement objectives, as well as their passivity.”35 Yet specifically in the history of everyday life, evaluation cannot go about its task without applying criteria that are also distinctly subject oriented. That is, it is equally necessary to relate the everyday life of historically concrete social individuals to the advance or stagnation of the historical process and cultural progress, and to do so in a fundamental way. At the same time, however, the level for evaluation of everyday practice should not be pegged so high that another term of reference is inadmissibly reduced in importance, namely, the criterion of the individual ability to act. How is that individual ability to act molded? How is it applied within the conditions of everyday life? There are two approaches to this problem. On a general plane, concrete everyday life can be basically subsumed within the linear course of movement of the total social process, and related to questions of social theory, such as the nature of historical progress or the development of class subjectivity. This would constitute the necessary group-specific perspective of the historian of everyday life focusing on the general regularities of historical development and their ef-

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fects. On a more particular plane, statements can also be made regarding the immediate results of everyday efforts to cope with the objective demands on action for those directly involved and affected. It would then be feasible in the historical analysis of working-class life to throw light on the difficulties inherent in the daily practice of the individual’s struggle for a livelihood (the permanent insecurity of proletarian existence and the requirements of simply securing the minimum for survival). A chance would also open up for elucidating examples of “personal progress,” such as when workers succeeded in discovering, shaping, and possibly even extending their individual latitude for action. This also includes those creative and cunning efforts by workers to expand the scope for their individual material income—acting by their own wiles, but inconspicuously. Such diverse forms of “everyday class struggle”36 encompass the small economic advantages that workers were able to acquire for themselves and their families “underhandedly” and in the face of the demands of capital; they include hidden practices of refusal, the reappropriation of already “sold” labor time by secret prolongation of entitled rest breaks, or carefully nursing one’s strength in the expenditure of labor power.37 The differentiated formation of spaces for autonomous competence of wage laborers becomes possible on a level of analysis and explanation that has a quite definite orientation toward the subject. This level is open to the particularity of the historically determined findings, while also attempting to take into account the “dimension of imbuing activities with subjective meaning.”38 Wage laborers are able to shape those spheres for autonomous competence within the bosom of capitalist society—in an arena that falls short of the line of what is considered criminal and lies below the plane of political generalization and organization. Nonetheless, attention remains riveted on the bivalence of everyday life resulting from the immediate encounter between the demands of the individual and the social process of reproduction. That is why it is possible, on the one hand, to evaluate those tendencies in the everyday practice of wage laborers leading in the direction of a social change in their everyday life and which, in this context, also tend toward the development of class subjectivity and the ability to organize common interests collectively. Not only do wage laborers reproduce the social conditions determined by capital in their everyday life—simultaneously, they also produce those subjective qualities and modes of behavior which (as elements of proletarian class culture) have a tendency to rupture the bounds of this society.39 On the other hand, the functional connections between social and individual (as well as biological!) reproduction of social individuals in their everyday life are accentuated more along the lines of their specific personal configuration. In addition to the objective requirements of the ele-

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mentary minimum for existence or any possibly requisite assistance for survival, subjective elements such as individual life strategies and personal efforts to create meaning are evaluated: that is, the constant subjective striving of individuals for personal optimization of their everyday practice. In both orientations, everyday perspectives are evaluated in respect to the subjective realization of existing possibilities for action and development enjoyed by concrete class individuals within the historical context. The question regarding the specific manner in which the developmental contradictions between the fundamental social demands of reproduction, on the one hand, and personal interests in reproduction, on the other, can be resolved in practical terms within the matrix of a historically and socially ordered everyday life points up the genuine concrete connection between everyday life and history. The quality of the historical ability to act among workers (individually and as a collective) is closely linked with the extent to which they have developed individual subjectivity. For that reason, one possibly useful criterion for the evaluation of everyday historical life could consist in assessing the everyday life of social individuals in respect to the achieved degree of realization of the possibilities for individual development allowed by its objective conditions. This emphasis on everyday practice that appropriates subjective results is closely associated with a particular concept of culture elaborated a number of years ago in the field of cultural studies in the GDR.40 It conceptualizes the process of appropriation within the context of the dialectic of objective and subjective culture in the framework of class cultures (here proletarian class culture).41 This relation initially places strong general emphasis on the historical perspective of the class and its members. The question of the appropriation of the subjective ability to act within proletarian everyday life also directs our attention to the development of class subjectivity, but individual subjectivity is the level of initial interest. A problem arises here: is there a valuative criterion with which to assess in objective fashion the historical and social “appropriateness” of the relevant and highly personal solutions to the developmental contradiction between objective demands on action and the subjective unfolding of a sphere for latitude of action—solutions which class individuals must shape in their everyday practice? Phrased more concretely: within what historical forms of development can individual subjectivity be evolved? In this connection, the concept of historical forms of individuality could also be of potential relevance for application within research on the history of everyday life. There have been efforts afoot for some time now in Marxist cultural theory in the GDR to revamp the historical-material concept of Lebensweise, rendering it more sensitive both theoretically and methodologically. Such work has also sparked discussion of the con-

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cept of historical forms of individuality.42 In analogy to the theory of the economic formations of society, it could be conceived as a “theory of formation of individuality.”43 This characterizes the way in which the form taken by individual action in everyday life is determined. This would mean that all those “mediating agencies” between workers’ social and individual reproduction requirements would be conceived as a “proletarian form of individuality.” Those agencies are utilized by workers to create quite specific properties and modes of behavior engendered by their subjective ability to act within bourgeois society. This approach traces back the historically concrete necessities, opportunities, and limits of (class-bound) individual development among workers to the basic economic relation between wage labor and capital. In this view, both individual and class subjectivity can be identified.

Individual Appropriation and Symbolic Reproduction The Marxist conception of everyday life developed by the sociologists Sebastian Herkommer, Joachim Bischoff, and Karlheinz Maldaner can also prove a useful guidepost in directing us to a new stage in theoretical sophistication viewed from the standpoint of the mediation between the social and individual reproduction requirements of the wage laborer. They conceptualize Alltag as the individual appropriation of specific social structures—at one and the same time, this appropriation is both social reproduction and individualization. These thinkers develop the individual specifications of social reproduction utilizing the concept of appropriation, thus linking the two sides of the everyday practice of concrete individuals dialectically: the continuous reproduction of social relations and the individuality which is constantly being realized anew in this process of appropriation.44 In this way, they succeed in grasping both the social context and the dimension of specific personal identity and subjective shaping by individuals in their everyday life. If Alltag is conceptualized as the “routinized individual appropriation of life circumstances,”45 the question then arises as to how these routinized practices of appropriation actually operate at the point of intersection between social and individual requirements for reproduction. What social or individual matrix effects individual realization? The authors suggest proceeding on the basis of the assumption that this routinized individual activity of appropriation takes place “in the forms of symbolic reproduction, and with its means.”46 In order to decipher this symbolism of everyday life in a socially differentiated manner, they draw on the seminal work of the French cultural sociologist and ethnologist Pierre Bourdieu dealing with cultural-symbolic forms and his concept of “habitus.”47

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Taking certain theoretical cues from Bourdieu, they conceptualize the everyday life of concrete class individuals as a “system of symbolic relations between individuals in which they, without their awareness, distinguish and express their social situation and individual uniqueness by means of everyday action.”48 Habitus, viewed as “systems of permanent dispositions,”49 also endows everyday practice with a class-specific structure. Habitus facilitates mastery of the routine acts of everyday life as something self-evident. Yet at the same time, it generates the necessary “strategies which make it possible to confront unanticipated and constantly novel situations.”50 Utilizing the concept of habitus, one can show that the “system of distinctive signs,”51 into which the forms and products of everyday practice are shaped as a result of specific judgments and evaluations, expresses the objective class position in highly diverse cultural-symbolic forms. Bourdieu also calls attention to the “relative independence of this system of actions and key elements or, if you will, distinguishing signs by dint of which subjects express and at the same time . . . constitute their position in social structure.”52 These symbolic signs and meanings are simultaneously “solidified” historical experience. In habitus, which Bourdieu labels the “incorporated class,”53 specific schemata are objectified which have been “formed in the course of collective history and acquired by the individual in his own personal history.”54 The analysis of cultural-symbolic forms in the everyday life of concrete individuals has been given precious little attention to date by social-scientific research in the GDR. Work by Pierre Bourdieu has only recently had an impact here, at least in the field of cultural theory.55 On the other hand, various authors have stressed the importance of placing greater emphasis in the future on the explanation of cultural forms, symbols, and meanings in Marxist research on Lebensweise in the fields of cultural studies and cultural history.56 Future novel approaches can profit from the insight provided by habitus into the dynamics of appropriation, namely, that the activity of appropriating by individuals in everyday life is specifically structured and follows specific internalized rules; the latter have certain symbolic meanings and mediate a comprehensive social significance. At the same time, Marxist research has pointed out the epistemic limitations inherent in the concept of habitus as developed by Bourdieu.57 On the one hand, such limitations can be attributed to Bourdieu’s equal weighting of primary and derived class features for the determination of the class situation; on the other, they derive from the fact that in Bourdieu’s angle of vision, the concrete forms of habitus seem little amenable to change—and thus appear as though they were immutable and virtually fixed, determined by nature. Despite these reservations, it should be noted

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that Bourdieu’s concept of habitus has thrown theoretical light on the fact “that the conditions which largely structure a society acquire a kind of doubling in the cultural-symbolic forms. Via the mechanism of transformation, they take on another shape. The consequence for the everyday, practical life process of individuals is that the latter process proceeds according to (structured) rules—though without any necessity for the acting individuals to be conscious of those rules.”58 Even within Marxist research on alltagsgeschichte, the concept of habitus could help to sharpen and deepen insights, and provide a differentiated explanation for the effective mechanisms (functioning to “regulate” everyday life) associated with specific signs, gestures, rituals, rules, norms, values, and patterns of perception and interpretation in their capacity as specific expressions of cultural-symbolic forms in the everyday life of concrete class individuals. In this respect, finally, it might also constitute a step forward to conceive of the concepts of habitus and historical forms of individuality as correlates, as Maase has suggested59—though this notion has yet to be elaborated in theoretical terms.

An Example from Everyday History: The Dissolution of the Practice of Shared Family Meals among the Proletariat In this section, I wish to explore in brief an illustrative point: perhaps it could prove useful to work out historically more precise explanations for a specific and interesting phenomenon that accompanied the processes of transformation in the eating habits of wage laborers, doing so precisely in respect to cultural-symbolic forms and their relative independence and inertia in everyday life. The community (Tischgemeinschaft) based on the practice of shared family meals can be viewed as just such a culturalsymbolic form. Thus, for example, the shared lunch table of the “entire house” constituted an appropriate cultural form of this meal in the preindustrial period—because it was able to mediate both social and individual reproductive necessities in optimal fashion. The process of dissolution of the domestic family meal-sharing community commenced with the transition to mass factory production methods.60 Nonetheless, the family community for the shared noon meal retained its salience in the workers’ system of values and within their everyday practice. As a traditional and specific internalized cultural-symbolic form, it continued to live on and mold the efforts of workers attempting to retain the noon meal at home under any and all circumstances. On the other hand, alternatives such as a “meal-sharing community in the factory” initially enjoyed genuine “acceptance” only on rare occasion. The shattering of the cultural-symbolic form of the domestic shared

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table at the noon meal was a lengthy process (in which the various individual transitions often occurred with great abruptness). Against the general backdrop of industrialization, proletarianization, and urbanization, one should point out those factors which played the principal role in altering the structures of the conditions of reproduction for workers and their families in conjunction with the shared noon meal in the bosom of the family: separation between workplace and residence, the growing distance between the home and the factory, the tendency toward a shorter break at noon, and an increase in the number of wives working outside the home. If the man worked away from his residence but his spouse was still at home and able to prepare a meal, even long distances and the corresponding need for haste were accepted into the bargain as preconditions for continuing to have lunch at home. If he was unable to return home, there was still often a possibility for his wife or children to bring a noon meal to the factory. So it frequently proved possible in this way to reconstitute a community for shared family meals—though this was no longer around the family dinner table, but rather on the periphery of the place of work at some distance from the residence. That arrangement provided an opportunity for a “momentary rupture in the sphere of production via shifting to familial relations,”61 but it was little more than a paltry and short-lived shadow of the original domestic family table. Capital perceived the shared noon meal as an obstacle to cranking up the pace of the processes of production, and soon set about dissolving all such initiatives for a common noon meal in the factory. It increasingly restricted the on-site presence of family members temporally and spatially,62 ultimately banishing them altogether from the premises of the factory. The problem of the familial community for common meals took on a basically new quality around the turn of the century, when the number of women dependent on wage labor outside the home experienced a steep rise. This ushered in major changes for all members of the family. Initially, such external employment meant that the working-class wife— who remained responsible, now as before, for running the domestic household—now had a hefty extra burden to shoulder: in addition to her occupational duties, she still had to prepare the family’s meals (for example, the evening meal), or scurry home at noon in order to serve a warm meal to the family returning home for lunch (her job notwithstanding). Female factory workers were in fact entitled to request a longer noon break specifically for this purpose. The short amount of time allotted often sufficed only for heating up what had been cooked earlier. On occasion, ready-to-eat “take-home” meals were brought from a lunch wagon and consumed in the bosom of the family.63 This also had certain implications for the husband—whose presence at home was now no longer expected by a familial meal-sharing commu-

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nity. He either made do with a cold meal or, circumstances at the factory permitting, ate a warm meal he had brought in his dinner pail from home. If he could afford to do so, he took advantage of the semipublic or public facilities for eating (factory canteens, cheap restaurants, saloons, lunch wagons, luncheonettes, etc.). Subjectively, however, these mass dining facilities were rarely seen initially as genuine, solid alternatives to a good home-cooked meal. Along with prejudices against public “soup kitchens,” for example, the workers sometimes demonstratively rejected the cafeterias and “mess halls” provided by the factory owners. Thus, even as late as 1925, only about a fourth of the workers at the Krupp plants were taking advantage of the factory “canteens.”64 When mothers worked outside the home, this also had an enormous impact on the lives of their children. For example, schoolchildren could no longer count on having lunch at home as they had in the past. Since many of them ate only a small breakfast or none at all, the school physicians in the large urban areas registered an alarming increase in malnutrition among elementary school pupils. In order to ameliorate this distressing situation, now a quite evident problem, bourgeois charitable associations began to provide needy schoolchildren with a warm lunch. However, this initiative soon triggered vehement opposition by conservative educational officials and experts on social hygiene. The tenor of their arguments ran as follows: in a proper household, the family should gather together at a (domestic!) dinner table; the woman of the house has a responsibility to prepare a meal for her husband and children—consequently, she should stay at home and not go out to work. They were bitterly opposed to all tendencies toward developing social alternatives to the familial dinner table, such as public mass eating halls. The only reason which they felt justified children’s participation in meals at school (privately organized and almost always free of charge) was family poverty. But that arrangement, they argued, should not be regarded as a permanent fixture for the children concerned. As a welfare measure, even school lunch programs such as these also had the ultimate aim of enabling the family to reassume its responsibility for providing for the hungry children. For that reason, conservative circles were adamantly opposed to school lunch programs as a permanent feature and rejected demands by the Social Democrats, for example, to grant municipal subsidies for such programs or even for the city to take them over completely.65 As early as 1896, a reporter named Cuno had expressed his fears during deliberations of the Deutscher Verein für Armenpflege und Wohltätigkeit (German Association for Charity and Care for the Indigent) that “a mass program of food provision for children could weaken the bonds of familial cohesion and the sense of self-responsibility of the parents.”66 He proposed a resolution that was subsequently adopted by the plenum and

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served to impede the development of school lunch programs throughout Germany for the following decade: “Wherever possible, with the cooperation of school authorities, provision of food to schoolchildren must be limited only to those cases in which this welfare appears necessary for pedagogical reasons and cannot be provided by the respective families.”67 The distribution of breakfast to needy children shortly before the beginning of school or during the ten o’clock recess, likewise a program provided by private charity organizations, was tolerated—since attention span and ability to concentrate (and thus success in learning one’s lessons) were endangered if a child went hungry. In any event, the objective was to make sure there was no justification for a children’s lunch program at school as a new form of the noon meal for schoolchildren—in keeping with the altered demands of reproduction. Writing in 1909, Ignaz Kaup, an expert on social hygiene, cogently summed up the negative point of view: “Imagine a family with three children, two of them of school age and one younger. The moment an opportunity exists for the school-age children to be provided with a meal, their mother will take immediate advantage of that, and also find someplace to put the younger child outside the home during the day. In this way, relieved of any obligations to feed and educate the children, she is free to pursue an occupation outside the home from morning to evening without any interference.”68 In historical retrospect, that is indeed precisely what occurred. With the entry of women into social production, the basis was knocked out from under a shared family lunch within the framework of the domestic dining community, at least on workdays.69 The changed structures of the conditions of reproduction led to differentiated types of services offered outside the home in the field of commercial mass provision of meals. In the course of these socialization processes, the traditional cultural form of the domestic familial meal-sharing community was shattered. In place of the shared lunch table in the family, new public forms for consumption of the weekday noon meal gradually came into being. Those forms at least allowed for the eventuality that new communities for meal-taking outside the home could take shape—though now separate for each member of the family. In this way, there was a tendency to shift the social dimension of the noon meal “from the family to other social units which were constituted on the basis of the process of labor.”70 In connection with his studies of the symbolic meaning of social estate in German feudal and early bourgeois society, the historian Robert M. Berdahl has pointed out “that symbolic formations and the habitus which manifests itself in them tend to last longer than the socioeconomic systems which originally generated them.”71 The identifiable shifts between

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the structural changes in the reproduction conditions of the workers and the actual radical change in the customary way of consuming the noon meal can—like the period of time which lapsed between the factual impossibility of continuing with the practice of shared family meals and the subjective acceptance of its inevitability—probably be convincingly accounted for only if one also examines the symbolic meanings of the traditional domestic meal-sharing community and its continued presence within proletarian everyday thinking. The reluctant acceptance of the dissolution of the customary family meal-sharing community and the proletarian (and bourgeois) rejection of new forms of the noon meal outside the home involved more than just the symbolic value of home-cooked food. Rather, the decisive factor was the routinelike repetition (and thus realization) of well-known, familiar rituals, patterns of perception, and values. As long as a factory worker was, for example, able to hurry home during the noon break and enjoy lunch in the bosom of the immediate family, he had an opportunity to experience familial security at midday, escape the influence of the factory temporarily, and be for a short time “among his own.” He also had an opportunity to demonstrate to himself and others the hierarchical position he enjoyed as father and breadwinner in the family (by beginning and ending the meal, his right to the biggest portion, etc.) and to make sure of his familial importance via this reproduction of the gender role(s). At home he found the social space for (partial) self-determination, while there were rules and regulations in effect in the luncheon rooms of the factories or in the popular eating halls that he was unfamiliar with—or which had been introduced against his interests: the separation of men and women, leaving the dining premises immediately after finishing eating (emphasis on time discipline!), loud conversation strictly forbidden, and especially the prohibition of smoking, and often a similar interdiction on alcohol. By drawing on the concept of habitus in the analysis of everyday history, it becomes possible to assess the multifaceted and many-layered meanings of such a cultural-symbolic form in a way that is proximate to the subject, rather than detached from her/him. Those meanings existed only for the persons directly involved, but simultaneously fulfilled a constitutive function within proletarian class culture. In addition, important reasons embedded in the symbolic meanings of the familial meal-sharing community can be identified which help explain why the process of making proletarian meals “public” ran up against unmistakable resistance on the part of the workers. Moreover, one can confirm in a basic way the utility of the precise analysis of the complex symbolism of everyday life: it can introduce an unusually suggestive and highly illuminating perspective into the historical-material description of the subjective dimension of historical development.

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Can the Dimension of Everyday History Open New Perspectives in Historiography? The attempt to render the subjective dimension of historical events on the plane of the everyday life of the individual visible is initially associated with an epistemic expectation, namely, that deeper insight can be gained in this way into the concrete impact of developmental contradictions within the historical process. At the same time, such historiographic assessment of everyday life also suggests an enlarged conception of historiography—one that is able to grasp, categorize, and evaluate the respective multilayered character, unique features, and contradictory qualities of individual expressions of life. Such an orientation should facilitate a perspective which sees the historical everyday life of specific classes and social groups both in terms of the way it has been determined by the given production mode and its own internal dynamism. Jan Peters was thus quite correct in suggesting that the proper object of alltagsgeschichte should be sought in the interactive combination of “the subjectivity and complexity of what is objective in history.”72 Inquiry into everyday history could be effectively applied on two levels of viewing historical development. On the one hand, such investigations offer the possibility to work out the total embracing social perspective of the everyday experience of concrete subjects. By means of a creative activity of appropriation in their daily lives, individuals generate those prerequisites that enhance the potential to change everyday life—and ultimately society as well. The historical ability of the working class to act is also rooted in the experiences and routines which workers have appropriated in attempts to master the demands placed on them in their personal everyday lives; in turn, those experiences harbor the potential for (collective) generalization. To that extent, alltagsgeschichte is closely bound up with class struggle and political history. In historiography, a practical demand has crystallized, namely, to link the historical process even more closely with the everyday history of its driving social forces. Thus, for example, the historiography of class struggle now is also in search of data on the way in which social conflicts of interest evolved, and how they were dealt with within everyday life. There is likewise an interest in determining the conditions in everyday life which can help to explain why a particular concrete situation came to a head, so to speak, precipitating events that had a subsequent political impact. Thus, Marxist historiography should also keep everyday history in this sense ever in mind, and take a constant share in its writing.73 Secondly, research on the history of everyday life has a particular ability: it can encompass the individual perspective of the everyday life of concrete subjects as a part of historical reflection. On this plateau, atten-

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tion finally is accorded to the subjective ways in which those involved and affected—the Betroffenen—perceive, interpret, and react. Their very personal efforts and statements, their specifically shaped needs and idiosyncratic (eigen-artig) motives, distinctive hopes, and disappointments can be ferreted out by the researcher and given a sensitive interpretation. This distinct proximity to the subject means that there is an “immediacy that not only presupposes the human being, but wishes to present his voice—using sources that are new and read in a different way.”74 Not only is the dynamic terrain of matters individual, special, and even accidental justified here as a topic of inquiry. Even more: the fact that they are taken into consideration by scholarship enables research on everyday life to penetrate into epistemic territory which previously eluded the probe of historiography. Particularly in connection with this perspective oriented toward everyday life, it is widely recognized that the discipline of Volkskunde in the GDR has been able to amass a substantial fund of experience that should also prove of future utility when brought to bear within investigations on the everyday life of the urban proletariat. In that connection, it might well prove feasible to make productive use of differences in the discipline-specific approach to research on everyday life, say of the kind Kaspar Maase sees “between research on the mode of life carried out in cultural studies, whose object is the field of activities—and approaches in ethnographic research on everyday life, focused more on smaller, subordinate units of action.”75 Work on alltagsgeschichte in the GDR has only just begun to reflect on the nature of its theoretical underpinnings and practical opportunities for knowledge, and to accumulate experience that can be properly generalized. Only now is discussion on these matters starting to evolve. Hence, it is accurate to say that the Marxist historiography of everyday life in the GDR is still at an embryonic stage, and its development will require patience and caution. Research on everyday history in various scholarly disciplines reflects the ambitious effort afoot here to develop the history of everyday life, transforming the field from its current status as a marginal phenomenon into an integral component of our historiography. Knowledge founded on a solid empirical basis, advancing us to a higher stage of insight, will be its strongest testimonial.

Author’s Postscript, 1992 This article requires a postscript. In the light of the title alone, one might well wonder whether in the meantime the topic dealt with here has, like the GDR itself, also faded from the scene. How does the reader today

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respond to what is stated here? And how do I as author now view what I wrote? Can continuities in scientific thought prevail while social scales of value are wrenched in a process of profound transformation—as currently among the former citizens of the GDR? A factor compounding the element of temporal distance—the above manuscript was completed in early 1988—is the massive shift in the paradigm of society that has occurred since. That systemic transmutation has been accompanied by new modes of perception, transposed orientations and ways of seeing, altered perspectives as well as an array of expanded opportunities for the expression of ideas. All this is reason enough for this author to ask himself some difficult questions: What can and should be added here, postscripted from the perspective of 1992? Where is it necessary to explain, at what points is self-critical correction required? What continues to be valid? What assertions and arguments can still be maintained? Particularly in the more general interest of the historiography of everyday life, one useful approach might be to rework the entire essay—going back through its body, for example, and expressing now in clear and unmistakable language certain statements which back in 1988 were concealed behind a screen of reserve and innuendo—whether then actually necessary or only presumed to be so. As author, I could take advantage of this chance to bring the essay up to date, describing various developments since its completion. But such a strategy would in fact amount to writing a whole new paper—since it would also necessitate a comprehensive reckoning with the past as part of the update. I have chosen an alternative path: the present text is the exact translation, unaltered, of the one I wrote when the GDR was still a reality, and I have elected to supplement it here by the addition of certain elucidating comments and observations. In 1983, as a scholar on the staff of the Academy of Sciences who had been trained in cultural studies, had worked in the field of Volkskunde, and had come to the academy from a background of university-based research experience in cultural history, I authored a theoretical paper on the historiography of everyday life and workers’ culture; buoyed at the time by a spirit of hope, I was able to underpin my remarks by reference to the most recent international developments in the field.76 In late 1987, Alf Lüdtke, who had established a network of good contacts with researchers in cultural studies in the GDR, invited me to contribute that original paper, in slightly revised form, as a chapter to the collection on alltagsgeschichte that he was preparing to edit. The planned minor revision evolved into a whole new essay. However, that original sense of euphoria back in 1983 had long since given way to feeling of discontent on my part. Nonetheless, I knuckled down, accepted my obligation, and tried to communicate two basic con-

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cerns in the essay. First of all, I wanted to highlight developments that had actually taken place in the GDR in the field of everyday-historical inquiry, and to do so in a demonstrative way. Secondly, I attempted to contribute to a theoretical undergirding for the historiography of everyday life with the idea of fostering the advance of this research current in the GDR as well, despite all the existing impediments blocking its channel. In view of the circumstance that this was to be my first publication in the West and would have to pass a barrier of censorship that was at least two-tiered, I chose (clandestinely quite pleased) to mask the actual message in the seemingly pious formulation of the title’s question: had historians in the GDR at that juncture in 1988 indeed come any closer to people’s everyday life? The unsentimental answer was an unequivocal no! Nonetheless, I tried to awaken hopeful expectations. Consequently, the conclusions arrived at there were marked by an expedient optimism; my theoretical reflections bore the stamp of my conviction that a sense of reality would in the end ultimately prevail—a bit of wishful thinking that, in the event, proved illusory. In the GDR, the historiography of everyday life had to struggle under the weight of unfavorable conditions. On the one hand, it never succeeded in becoming a socially accepted topic among professional historians; on the other, from its very inception, it was subject to a special (politically motivated) necessity to justify its existence. Right down to the end, the subfield was denied entry to the strictly hierarchical edifice of established historical research. That situation would have been possible to countenance if alltagsgeschichte had not been discredited by references to its Western origins, and its development in the GDR had not been vigorously impeded. A lack of understanding, skepticism, and conscious misinterpretation, coupled with arrogant affectations of power on the part of the chief gatekeepers of the dominant view of history, made it more difficult for everyday-life historians to develop conceptions and apply them to empirical realities. Georg Iggers has recently sketched a knowledgeable picture of the constraints external to scholarship to which research on social, cultural, and everyday history was also subject in the GDR.77 Naturally, an outside visitor’s fleeting glance at the historiographical landscape was in no position to perceive just how subtle the pressure exercised by the historians who wielded power in the profession ultimately was. In professional contacts with authoritative critics, the spectrum of reactions to alltagsgeschichte ranged from total ignorance to adamant rejection or belittlement (quite often politically motivated) to a categorical demand for including social group–specific regularities in its perspective. This prompted everyday-life historians to the response that Alltag was “obviously” specific in

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respect to formation and class, and that what was actually involved here were “more differentiated and deeper-probing representations of history.” Its acceptance as an “authorized” and thus permissible approach in research was at least delayed. The other side of this coin was that as long as everyday-historical questions remained shunted off onto the sidetrack of marginal disciplines, they continued to be tolerated as an object of interest pursued by what were deemed to be harmless “exotics.” Even previous critics of alltagsgeschichte suddenly became its “friends,” referring to examples from Volkskunde and its canon of thematic concerns traditionally close to everyday life, or pointing to illustrations from cultural and economic history to underscore what sorts of research had been possible in the GDR (and had even been “facilitated” thanks to them). This about-face posturing became quite frequent, particularly after November 1989. Especially by its critics, the historiography of everyday life was attributed a political importance that in point of fact remained totally inappropriate, yet was to a certain degree understandable. Such critics believed that research on everyday historical life—which admittedly underscored the subjective side of history over against objective regularities—if pursued consistently, could pose a serious threat, at least to the established view of history, if not perhaps to the social system and regime itself. This possibly explosive aspect of their subfield was also recognized by everyday-life historians, yet they in turn tended to overestimate that potential. Many not only expected their pursuits to spawn suggestions, based on empirical historical reasons, for an urgently needed social transformation. Along with the concept that the historiography of everyday life could exercise a long-term effect that would undermine the system, they also harbored hopes that there would be mounting pressure exerted by realities in the GDR, and that such pressure would have consequences for social reform. This illusion proved to be a tragic error. So one can wonder: were the political apprehensions in the GDR regarding a strengthened historiography of everyday life in any way warranted? I think not. It is true that the ideologically fossilized structures in the state had long since become extremely brittle, but even several battalions of everyday-life historians gnawing away at its roots and branches would most likely never have brought down the system. Research on alltagsgeschichte bore more resemblance to a kind of niche enjoying increasing popularity than to the germinative practice of an alternative conception of social history—and thus perhaps of an alternative social policy and politics. The subfield was not only harassed “from above,” but was likewise pressurized by its seemingly close next-door neighbors, namely, practi-

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tioners of social history in the GDR, a discipline which itself had only recently gained acceptance in the country. Starting in 1988, social historians had begun to press their exclusive territorial claims vis-à-vis alltagsgeschichte, attempting to co-opt the current as an “integral component” of social history. Disagreeing, I argued that there were justified differences between the two historiographic approaches. In view of its resolute proximity to the subject and focus on the microsocial analysis of individual spheres for action and people’s practices in coping with quotidian life, I would contend that everyday-life historiography can certainly evolve quite specific methodological perspectives and ways of posing questions, so that as a subfield it can legitimately claim a potential for generating original insights—though without aspiring to recognition as a separate independent discipline. If one takes a sober look at the practice of research into everyday life at the end of the GDR, it is obvious that on the whole it was clearly lagging behind kindred developments in the West. That fact is not surprising, and was indeed unavoidable. There were important reasons for the lag, connected both with the later inception of serious work on everyday history in the GDR and the above-mentioned opposition rankling both within and beyond the professional guild. One of the upshots of the more general policy of hermetically sealing off the country was the high degree of isolation from international scholarship and its conceptual discussions; as a rule, such exchanges could only be followed and received passively. Consequently, a fair portion of what today is occasionally cited as evidence for research on social history and alltagsgeschichte in the GDR appears indeed to be quite modest and “homemade” when measured by an international yardstick. Moreover, there was precious little multiplicity in the GDR, no genuine schools of social or everyday-life history, and virtually no theoreticalmethodological discussion of research approaches in alltagsgeschichte. This lack of scholarly communication was not only something “determined by the system”; many scholars felt that the whole topic was suspect, inconsequential, or could not be adequately discussed. It was not until March 15, 1990—and at the time incidentally quite independent of the “great change” taking place (!)—that a Working Group on the History of Everyday Life (Arbeitskreis für Alltagsgeschichte) was established at the initiative of the economic historian Jan Peters, though its future remains uncertain. The fact that few theoretical conceptions were developed in the subfield within the GDR was largely consistent with the prevailing circum-

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stances; moreover, even on an international plane, such theorizing has been relatively rare. To the extent that theoretical reflections did appear in print, they found little echo in the GDR. Operating in that context, I chose in 1988 to try to work out a cogent theoretical underpinning for my view that alltagsgeschichte was not just a passing fad, but an inevitable and indeed meaningful direction in historiography, both generally and in the specific case of the GDR. I felt the correct way to tackle the problem was not only to assay the power of the concept of Alltag—say in contradistinction to that of Lebensweise—but also to search out opportunities for rendering the historical-materialist approach more sensitive. I believed that appropriating Bourdieu’s concept of habitus represented just such an opportunity: habitus is not only a useful tool in identifying experiences, needs, and patterns of behavior that transcend class and social strata; it can also sharpen the analyst’s sights for the multilayered quality of social behavior, for example, and the “fine distinctions” among class segments present in the patterns of perception and interpretation, and various distinctive symbols, ritual acts, and so on associated with their respective strategies of pretension. As a result, I also felt it was important to suggest employing more sensitively calibrated concepts, or ones based on a different methodological angle of approach, such as practical success in coping with life’s challenges, autonomous competence, Eigen-Sinn, and symbolic forms, thus drawing attention to specific epistemic possibilities proffered by the “everyday-historical way of seeing.” Under the given circumstances, could alltagsgeschichte in the GDR ever have come to enjoy better prospects? It was certainly not possible to advance the cause of everyday-life historiography in the state by strongarm tactics and bludgeoning; rather, that aim had to be pursued along practical lines, by the gentle pressure of concrete results, even if the lag in distance behind the West would have continued to widen. Inquiry into everyday historical life remained feasible to a certain extent at the outlying margins of various social-scientific disciplines. That is the more significant line of development. Hopefully, in this connection, certain research findings will in the future also see the light of day, though that eventuality is receding as a consequence of the “winding down” (dissolution or reduction) of academic and university research institutes in the former GDR. The presence of the potential for continued research, in any case limited, will soon be barely perceptible—and in any event, not articulated as a distinctively eastern German voice. The GDR has become history, and with it the historiography of everyday life there. Yet perhaps the new “freedom of thought” will serve to spark a miraculous resuscitation of approaches (such as existed) prema-

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turely cut short, thus bringing to completion conceptions whose gestation was stalled as a product of official and self-censorship. And that reviviscence might provide a fine piece of supplementary evidence, after the fact, for the deprovincialization78 of important segments of social, cultural, and everyday-life historiography in the former German Democratic Republic.

Notes 1. Jürgen Kuczynski, Geschichte des Alltags des deutschen Volkes, 5 vols. (Berlin, 1980–82). 2. Jürgen Kuczynski, Geschichte des Alltags des deutschen Volkes. Nachträgliche Gedanken (Berlin, 1985). 3. Sigrid and Wolfgang Jacobeit, Illustrierte Alltagsgeschichte des deutschen Volkes, vols. 1–2 (Leipzig, Jena, and Berlin, 1985–87). 4. Authors’ Collective [headed by Dietrich Mühlberg], Arbeiterleben um 1900 (Berlin, 1983). 5. Dietrich Mühlberg, ed., Proletariat. Kultur und Lebensweise im 19. Jahrhundert (Leipzig, 1986). 6. See Berlin um 1900 (Mitteilungen aus der kulturwissenschaftlichen Forschung, 21) (Berlin, 1987). 7. This ranges from Dieter Fricke’s observation that it is also important in the context of the history of the working class to deal with “questions pertaining to the everyday life of the workers, their ‘daily class struggle’ ” (Dieter Fricke, Handbuch zur Geschichte der deutschen Arbeiterbewegung 1869 bis 1917, (vol. 1 [Berlin, 1987], 15) to the documentary sketch depicting the everyday life of the wife of a leading Social Democrat (Wolfgang Schröder, Ernestine. Vom ungewöhnlichen Leben der ersten Frau Wilhelm Liebknechts [Leipzig, 1987]). 8. An overview can be found in Harald Dehne, “Aller Tage Leben. Zu neuen Forschungsansätzen im Beziehungsfeld von Alltag, Lebensweise und Kultur der Arbeiterklasse,” Jahrbuch für Volkskunde und Kulturgeschichte 28 (1985): 9– 48. 9. See Helga Schultz, “Zu Inhalt und Begriff marxistischer Regionalgeschichtsforschung,” Zeitschrift für Geschichtswissenschaft 33 (1985): 880. 10. See Wolfgang Jacobeit and Ute Mohrmann, “Einleitung,” in Jacobeit and Mohrmann, eds., Kultur und Lebensweise des Proletariats (Berlin, 1974), 7–19; Hermann Strobach, Rudolf Weinhold, and Bernhard Weißel, “Volkskundliche Forschungen in der DDR—Bilanz und Ausblick,” Jahrbuch für Volkskunde und Kulturgeschichte 18 (1975): 9–39; Hans-Jürgen Rach, “Gedanken zur Ausgestaltung eines Programms volkskundlicher Erforschung des Proletariats,” Abhandlungen und Berichte des Staatlichen Museums für Völkerkunde (Dresden) 35 (1976): 43–45; Wolfgang Jacobeit, “Volkskunde und Arbeiterkultur,” in Die andere Kultur. Volkskunde, Sozialwissenschaften und Arbeiterkultur, ed. Helmut Fielhauer and Olaf Bockhorn, (Vienna, Munich, and Zurich, 1982), 11–25; Ernst Hofmann, “Kulturgeschichtliche Ausstellungen. Diskussionsbemerkungen zu

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Möglichkeiten und Problemen,” Neue Museumskunde (Berlin) 25 (1982): 250– 57; Wolfgang Jacobeit, “Wege und Ziele der Volkskunde in der DDR,” Blätter für Heimatgeschichte, no. 1 (1985): 37–58. 11. A survey can be found in Dietrich Mühlberg, “Zum Stand kulturgeschichtlicher Proletariatsforschung in der DDR,” in Arbeiterkulturen zwischen Alltag und Politik, ed. Friedhelm Boll (Vienna, Munich, and Zurich, 1986), 71–88. 12. See more recently Anneliese Neef, Mühsal ein Leben lang. Zur Situation der Arbeiterfrau um 1900 (Berlin, 1988); Manfred Hübner, Zwischen Alkohol und Abstinenz. Trinksitten und Alkoholfrage im deutschen Proletariat bis 1914 (Berlin, 1988). 13. Horst Handke, “Zur sozialgeschichtlichen Forschung in der DDR,” Zeitschrift für Geschichtswissenschaft 34 (1986): 291–302. 14. Cited in Aaron J. Gurjewitsch, Das Weltbild des mittelalterlichen Menschen (Dresden, 1978), 117. 15. Jürgen Hirschmann, “Alltagserkennen, Alltagsbewußtsein—Wesen, Struktur, soziale Funktion,” in Gesellschaft und Bewußtsein, ed. Werner Müller and Dieter Uhlig (Berlin, 1980), 229. 16. Wladislaw Kelle and Matwej Kowalson, Theorie und Geschichte (Berlin, 1984), 189. 17. Ibid., 191. 18. Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, Die deutsche Ideologie, in Marx-EngelsWerke, vol. 3 (Berlin, 1969), 21. 19. Lothar Kühne, “Zum Begriff und zur Methode der Erforschung der Lebensweise,” Weimarer Beiträge 24, no. 8 (1978): 31. 20. Kaspar Maase, “ ‘Persönlicher Sinn’ und individuelle Existenznotwendigkeiten,” Weimarer Beiträge 34 (1988): 655. 21. Kaspar Maase, Lebensweise der Lohnarbeiter in der Freizeit (Frankfurt am Main, 1984), 22. 22. See Dehne, “Aller Tage Leben,” 16ff.; a critical discussion of phenomenological-interactionist theories can also be found in Peter Alheit, Alltagsleben (Frankfurt am Main and New York, 1983), 15ff. 23. Maase, Lebensweise, 22. 24. Sebastian Herkommer, Joachim Bischoff, and Karlheinz Maldaner, Alltag, Bewußtsein, Klassen (Hamburg, 1984), 157. 25. Dieter Kramer, Theorien zur historischen Arbeiterkultur (Marburg, 1987), 83. 26. See Dehne, “Aller Tage Leben,” 40f. 27. Thus, for example, in connection with his assessment of the work of the Annales historians, see Kuczynski, Geschichte des Alltags, vol. 1, 14; similar notions for a history of “everyday life, mode of life” have been put forward by Dietrich Mühlberg, “Kulturtheoretische Anmerkungen zum Bedürfnis nach Kulturgeschichtsschreibung,” Weimarer Beiträge 23, no. 2 (1977): 79. 28. Klaus Gößler, “Karl Marx und Probleme des Alltagserkennens,” Deutsche Zeitschrift für Philosophie 31 (1983): 1261. 29. Hermann Lehmann, review of Jürgen Kuczynski, Geschichte des Alltags des deutschen Volkes, vol. 1, in Jahrbuch für Soziologie und Sozialpolitik (Berlin, 1982), 334.

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30. Jan Peters, “Wiederentdeckung des Alltags,” review article in Jahrbuch für Wirtschaftsgeschichte 2 (1982): 150. 31. See also Dieter Kramer, “Arbeiterkultur und Kulturanalyse, Klassen- und Formationsspezifik—8 Thesen,” in Studien zur Arbeiterkultur, ed. Albrecht Lehmann (Münster, 1984), 216–23. 32. Alheit, Alltagsleben, 63. 33. Herkommer et al., Alltag, 197. 34. Alf Lüdtke, “Rekonstruktion von Alltagswirklichkeit—Entpolitisierung der Sozialgeschichte?” in Robert M. Berdahl et al., Klassen und Kultur (Frankfurt am Main, 1982), 330. 35. Jacobeit, “Wege und Ziele,” 45. 36. Kuczynski, Geschichte des Alltags, vol. 1, 13. 37. See Alf Lüdtke, “Arbeitsbeginn, Arbeitspausen, Arbeitsende. Skizzen zu Bedürfnisbefriedigung und Industriearbeit im 19. und frühen 20. Jahrhundert,” in Sozialgeschichte der Freizeit, ed. Gerhard Huck (Wuppertal, 1980), 95–122; Lüdtke, “ ‘Deutsche Qualitätsarbeit,’ ‘Spielereien’ am Arbeitsplatz und ‘Fliehen’ aus der Fabrik: industrielle Arbeitsprozesse und Arbeiterverhalten in den 1920er Jahren—Aspekte eines offenen Forschungsfeldes,” in Arbeiterkulturen zwischen Alltag und Politik, ed. F. Boll, 155–97; see also his chapter 7 in the present volume, especially the section “Eigensinn and Complaisance in the Face of Domination.” 38. Maase, “ ‘Persönlicher Sinn,’ ” 665. 39. See Mühlberg, “Zum Stand,” 76, and Kaspar Maase, “Leben einzeln und frei wie ein Baum und brüderlich wie ein Wald. . . .” Wandel der Arbeiterkultur und Zukunft der Lebensweise (Frankfurt am Main, 1985). 40. See Dietrich Mühlberg, “Zur Diskussion des Kulturbegriffs,” Weimarer Beiträge 22, no. 1 (1976): 5–35; Mühlberg, “Kulturtheoretische Anmerkungen”; Isolde Dietrich and Dietrich Mühlberg, “Zu aktuellen Fragen der Kulturgeschichte der deutschen Arbeiterklasse,” Weimarer Beiträge 25, no. 8 (1979): 47– 78; Dietrich and Mühlberg, “Zur Kulturgeschichte der Arbeiterklasse. Voraussetzungen ihrer interdisziplinären Erforschung,” Jahrbuch für Volkskunde und Kulturgeschichte 22 (1979): 49–71; Dietrich Mühlberg, Woher wir wissen, was Kultur ist (Berlin, 1983), esp. 57ff.; Irene Dölling, Individuum und Kultur (Berlin, 1986). 41. Compare the theses put forward by the Forschungsgruppe Kulturgeschichte, Chair for Cultural Theory, Humboldt University (Berlin), “Zu einigen Problemen der Kulturgeschichte der deutschen Arbeiterklasse,” Mitteilungen aus der kulturwissenschaftlichen Forschung (Berlin, 1979), no. 4:13–74; see also Mühlberg, “Zum Stand,” 75ff. 42. See Dölling, Individuum und Kultur, esp. 102ff.; also Dölling, “Zur Vermittlung von gesellschaftlichem und individuellem Lebensprozeß. Bemerkungen zur Produktivität einer Theorie der Individualitätsformen,” Weimarer Beiträge 27, no. 10 (1981): 94–125; Dölling, “Formen der Individualität. Theorie der gesellschaftlichen und historischen Formen der Individualität im Verhältnis zur marxistisch-leninistischen Kulturtheorie und Kulturgeschichte,” Mitteilungen aus der kulturwissenschaftlichen Forschung, no. 11 (1982).

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43. Dölling, Individuum und Kultur, 121. 44. Herkommer et al., Alltag, 157. 45. Ibid., 199. 46. Ibid., 200. 47. Pierre Bourdieu, Der Habitus als Vermittlung zwischen Struktur und Praxis, in Zur Soziologie der symbolischen Formen (Frankfurt am Main, 1974, 125–158; originally published as Postface à “Architecture gothique et pensée scolastique” von Erwin Panofsky (Paris 1967); Bourdieu, Distinction: A Social Critique of the Judgement of Taste (London, 1985; originally published as La distinction: Critique sociale du jugement [Paris 1979]; German translation: Die feinen Unterschiede [Frankfurt am Main, 1982]); see also the Glossary. 48. Herkommer et al., Alltag, 202. 49. Pierre Bourdieu, Entwurf einer Theorie der Praxis auf der ethnologischen Grundlage der kabylischen Gesellschaft (Frankfurt am Main, 1976; originally published as Esquisse d’une Théorie de la Pratique [Geneva, 1972]), 165. 50. Bourdieu, Entwurf einer Theorie, 165. 51. Bourdieu, Die feinen Unterschiede, 278. 52. Bourdieu, Zur Soziologie, 57f. 53. Bourdieu, Die feinen Unterschiede, 686. 54. Ibid., 729. 55. See Irene Dölling, review of Pierre Bourdieu, Die feinen Unterschiede, in Weimarer Beiträge 32 (1986): 700–703; Dölling, Individuum und Kultur, 83ff. 56. See Irene Dölling, “Zum Beispiel: Alfred Lorenzers Sozialisationstheorie. Bemerkungen zum kulturtheoretischen Konzept der individuellen Vergesellschaftung,” in Kulturtheorien und Lebensweise (Mitteilungen aus der kulturwissenschaftlichen Forschung, no. 14) (Berlin, 1985), 66; Dölling, Individuum und Kultur, 15, 83ff.; Maase, Lebensweise der Lohnarbeiter, 21, 41f., 242ff.; Maase, “Arbeiterklasse und ‘Habitus’. Zu einigen Aspekten von Pierre Bourdieus Kultursoziologie,” Marxistische Blätter (Frankfurt am Main, 1986), no. 6:95–101; Maase, “ ‘Persönlicher Sinn,’ ” 656, 662; Mühlberg, “Zum Stand,” 83. 57. Maase, “Arbeiterklasse und ‘Habitus,’ ” esp. 97f.; Herkommer et al., Alltag, 233; Dölling, review of Bourdieu, Die feinen Unterschiede, 703. 58. Dölling, review of Bourdieu, Die feinen Unterschiede, 701. 59. Masse, “Arbeiterklasse und ‘Habitus,’ ” 101. 60. See also Claus-Dieter Rath, Reste der Tafelrunde (Reinbek, 1984), 149. 61. Lüdtke, “ ‘Deutsche Qualitätsarbeit,’ ” 168. 62. Lüdtke, “Arbeitsbeginn,” 110. 63. In Berlin, for example, the Verein für Kinder-Volksküchen (Association for Children’s Canteens) offered this possibility at a cost of ten pfennig per portion beginning around 1910; the scope of the program was quite substantial. 64. See Lüdtke, “ ‘Deutsche Qualitätsarbeit,’ ” 190. 65. In Berlin, for example, it took some fifteen years until the municipal authorities finally bowed to pressure and authorized large subsidies for school meals, beginning in 1908. Not until the end of 1916 did the city, forced by the war situation, take over direct control of the food program for schoolchildren. 66. “Verhandlungen der 16. Jahresversammlung des Deutschen Vereins für

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Armenpflege und Wohltätigkeit am 24. und 25.9.1896 in Straßburg i. E.,” Schriften des Deutschen Vereins für Armenpflege und Wohltätigkeit, no. 28 (Leipzig, 1896): 80. 67. Ibid., 149. 68. “Verhandlungen der 29. Jahresversammlung des Deutschen Vereins für Armenpflege und Wohltätigkeit am 23. und 24.9.1909 in München,” Schriften des Deutschen Vereins für Armenpflege und Wohltätigkeit, no. 90 (Leipzig, 1909): 91. 69. Lenin noted in 1919: “Public dining facilities, crèches, kindergartens— those are . . . the simple, everyday means which are . . . suited to liberate women,” W. I. Lenin, “Die große Initiative,” in Lenin, Werke, vol. 29 (Berlin, 1961), 419. 70. Thomas Kleinspehn, Warum sind wir so unersättlich? (Frankfurt am Main, 1987), 312f. 71. Robert M. Berdahl, “Anthropologie und Geschichte: Einige theoretische Perspektiven und ein Beispiel aus der preußisch-deutschen Geschichte,” in Berdahl et al., Klassen und Kultur, 268. 72. Jan Peters, “Alltag im Aufbau,” Jahrbuch für Volkskunde und Kulturgeschichte 30 (1987): 188. 73. See also Rolf Richter, “Zur Analyse und Kritik der nichtmarxistischen Geschichtsschreibung über den Alltag im deutschen Faschismus,” Beiträge zur Geschichte der Arbeiterbewegung 25 (1983): 831. 74. Peters, “Alltag im Aufbau,” 187. 75. Maase, “ ‘Persönlicher Sinn,’ ” 663f. 76. Dehne, “Aller Tage Leben.” 77. Georg Iggers, “Introduction,” in Iggers, ed., Marxist Historiography in Transformation: East German Social History in the 1980s (New York and Oxford, 1991), 1–37. 78. Iggers, “Introduction,” 87.

5 THE HISTORY OF EVERYDAY LIFE AND GENDER RELATIONS ON HISTORICAL AND HISTORIOGRAPHICAL RELATIONSHIPS Dorothee Wierling

W

HEN I first embarked upon historical research, my chief interest centered on the living conditions of women in the past. I concentrated on a social group composed exclusively of women—domestic servant girls1—investigating their origins, working and living conditions, normative values, dreams, plans and compromises, daily experiences, and strategies for survival and success. I was thus dealing with the history of ordinary private life as the history not only of everyday living conditions, but also of learning and action in an everyday framework—the history of a specific social experience and subjective perspective. The gender of these servant girls played a crucial role here. They experienced and utilized the social changes bound up with industrialization and urbanization in a specifically female way, namely, by developing plans for a future life which incorporated their temporary ties to a middle-class, urban household in the capacity of hired domestics as a transitional bridge eventually leading to a new form of life as a wage laborer or working-class housewife. However, they also experienced the circumstances they were confronted with—and the conditions and agreements into which they entered—against another social backdrop: as members of the lower class, generally from a rural milieu. Gender history and class history intermeshed in the social experience of these servant girls, generating problems that the established orienta-

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tions in social history have largely ignored, while women’s history has tried to address them principally in theoretical terms. Those problems revolve around the central question: what is the relation between gender and class as social categories? It was impossible to overlook this dimension in researching the everyday mode of life of these domestics, yet both more traditional and newer theories proved unserviceable. A key question that emerged initially was how lower-class females managed to cope with their everyday life; the everyday life of women appeared as the arena in which female competence was invincible. Yet that seemingly clear configuration, as plain as it was monotonous, lay shrouded in a veil of ambiguities and contradictions. The experiences, desires, and relations of these servant girls involved both impotence and power, traditionalism and modernity, dependence and autonomy, ambitiousness and loss of direction. In these ambivalent circumstances, they tried to stick to their plan for life within the framework of large-scale social change. The everyday perspective of these girls themselves was not sufficient as a basis to describe and, if possible, explain this process. It had to be supplemented by the perspective of other actors involved in this historical situation—the perception of their employers, the police, the social reformers. The subjectivity of those relevant sources was likewise plumbed and then linked with that of the servant girls: the result was a highly complex picture of a historical relation. Projected against this backdrop of personal research experience, my intention here is to discuss the importance of gender relations and their changes within the framework of the history of everyday life (alltagsgeschichte). It should become evident that these two directions in historiography can enter into quite different mutual relationships: the self-evident naturalness of affection between siblings, as well as the boredom of an old marriage. They can unite to demolish problems, concepts, and theories, or to construct them. To continue the image, the most productive modus vivendi between the pair would seem to be that of an “open relationship”—nonetheless, sometimes they manage to completely misjudge each other’s intentions.

Everyday Life and Gender as Categories of Historical Research The dimension of everyday life, I would argue, is not limited to specific domains. Alltag is not restricted to the so-called basic facts of human existence such as birth and death; it is more than the routine of daily labor; it is not just private or shaped by “small” events. Everyday experiences cannot be limited thematically: the “high” politics brought into the

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living room by the media, the fact that even “simple, everyday” people take part in public events, the possible breadth and diversity of experiences on the job, and the different historical conditions, for example, under which women give birth to children—all militate against any such thematic circumscription.2 I believe it makes more sense to define everyday life as the dimension that is delimited by (soft) boundaries which result from the modest scope of everyday action, although open for an unlimited variety of experiences, depending on the complexity of the given society and the tempo of its change. Alltag is the domain in which people exercise a direct influence— via their behavior—on their immediate circumstances. To a substantial degree, that everyday world is determined by others. Everyday action takes place under a set of overall conditions that are not subject to its influence. This fact notwithstanding, what is important is not just the filling in of this framework, but also its alteration or extension.3 Everyday life and the “folk,” the “people,” seem to belong together, and it is nothing but linguistic caution that prefers terms such as “the many” or “the masses.” The objection that even Bismarck had an everyday life points to the circumstance that most persons have nothing but that ordinary everyday life—that is, their action and influence do not extend beyond its boundaries—while certain other persons have an everyday private life in addition. However, the latter make decisions and exercise power beyond its confines, as individuals or members of organizations and institutions. If action in the everyday world is noninstitutional, more spontaneous, more organic, and centered only on quotidian life, that action is nonetheless not blind. It encompasses the immediate material and social environment and an individual’s future—comprehensible and amenable to planning. People try to see rhyme and reason in their everyday experiences and to take meaningful action within the scope of their possibilities. That behavior becomes part of a larger historical process which the history of everyday life aspires to describe and explain: what experiences give rise to everyday perceptions and orientations of action; how do they change, and what is their impact of the general contexture of historical processes?4 By the mid-1970s in the United States, women’s history could already point to some noteworthy initial findings; female historians at that time took stock and developed plans as to how and where additional women could be salvaged “from the darkness of history.”5 The previous focus, derived from the predilections of male elitist historiography, now should, they argued, no longer be limited to famous women and their achievements; similarly, more ought to be involved than just an attempt, finally and at long last, to evaluate the contributions made by women to the great social movements of their time. Historical scrutiny was to have a

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different focalization: women should not be viewed solely as the victims of circumstances determined and controlled by others. Instead, women’s history ought to endeavor to describe the social status of women in various societies and eras in the most exact terms possible—by a comprehensive investigation of the total complex of their living circumstances, their economic, legal, and social situation, the gamut of their activities in all spheres, and the impact of social change on this status. A shift began to occur in research perspectives and priorities when women were no longer viewed as persons who just also happened to be represented in maledominated domains (albeit with various shortcomings); rather, historians began to seek them out in those locales where—due to the gender-specific division of labor—they actually were the dominant and socially significant factor. More and more arenas were shifted into the purview of historical research that previously had been external to the catalog of topics in historiography. This occurred simultaneously with advances in a subcurrent of social history concentrating on the study of social groups and movements, even though apparently gender-neutral in thrust and predilection. The preferred topics in women’s history in the 1970s were women’s work in and outside the home as well as the various women’s movements. Indeed, many women historians at the time understood themselves to be a part of a women’s movement in search of heritage and historical identity. Scholars were also looking for a conceptual tool to apply to the historical finding that there was discrimination aganist women and male domination in the societies investigated. Alongside an array of social theories (see below), researchers in women’s studies tried to arrive at cogent explanations for the disadvantages suffered by women via analogies to other circumstances of oppression. Was sexism comparable to class oppression or racism? Was it thus a useful research strategy to regard women as a class, a minority, a downtrodden race? In a seminal paper, Joan Kelly rejected such analogy building. She argued that women were a gender, and that gender would have to be made a universal category of historical research. Proceeding from the concept of gender, she and other researchers developed a new perspective on history in general. They underscored that it is always necessary to explore the differential impact historical processes have had on men and women. Future research should not be concerned solely with trying to provide women—as a social group and previously neglected gender—with a history of their own. Rather, it is necessary to unmask all of history in its presumed gender neutrality, rewriting its annals anew under the paradigm of gender.6 Beginning in the 1980s, this American discussion also had an impact in the Federal Republic.7 Since that time, it has become common for female historians researching women and gender relations to call for “gender as a social/historical category.” But this call smacks more of wishful think-

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ing than a successful program. Even in the United States, where the speciality “women’s studies” has become accepted as a field (and degree major) at many universities, researchers have been dismayed at their lack of success in establishing the newly found paradigm among a scholarly public beyond the margins of the “women’s scene and movement”—let alone in propagating it as a practice in the professional historians’ guild. Among historians in Germany, the current state of affairs is even further removed from that goal. However, an admission is in order: in our own praxis, unfortunately, most women historians do not live up to the postulates of gender-oriented history. After all, we are principally engaged in doing and writing the history of women (my own work on female domestics being a good example of that), thus reinforcing the impression that “gender” is female; the claim of male history to universality and gender-neutrality need not be threatened in the least by such a unilateral approach. Since we still know far too little about the history of women, women’s history does not require any special additional legitimation—but isn’t it true that we also know precious little about men qua gender? On the other hand, women’s history is not only a legitimate field, but also a necessary prerequisite for the history of gender—since the latter is essentially based on distinction and comparison, and on male/female relations. In the final analysis, however, the success of the concept of gender as a social category will have to be measured in terms of its integration into the general history of society. This means two different things: (a) the practitioners of the latter must include gender in their categories, and (b) the history of gender must come to view itself as the history of society, that is, its job is (also) to investigate the connection between changing male/female relations and the broader web of change and transformation embracing all of society. Which brings us back to alltagsgeschichte: is it one of the fields in which women’s history (as the history of gender) can become fruitful for historiography—or perhaps even a field of combat from which to conquer the guild “from below,” so to speak?

Everyday Life and Gender—a “Natural” Couple? If women were “hidden” in the unexplored tissue of everyday life within the framework of traditional historiography,8 it became possible to discover them for history concomitant with the discovery of everyday life. This was because women were actually quite present and identifiable in Alltag: in the sphere of informal and private relations, outside the realm of power and organizations. I will only point out in passing that notwithstanding this fact, the historiography of everyday life nonetheless often chose to deal solely with males and their quotidian experience. Yet at the

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very least, historical research focused on Alltag can open up new vistas on dimensions in which both men and women had an experiential share. Women’s history likewise discovered the realm of the everyday as an arena where women were ubiquitous and well represented—and even played a central role. The everyday world, its mastering and organization, is considered by some to be women’s true domain; this is where they exercised a social influence via their work in the family and outside the home, their “nurturant power” and their social networks, their endurance and flexibility. It was in the realm of everyday life that they developed all those qualities generally bundled together under the label of female diligence and efficiency (Tüchtigkeit). A certain genus of women’s historiography has sprouted from this soil: under the banner of “how we managed to accomplish all that,”9 women are no longer assigned the role of victim in history; instead, they are attributed a contrary virtue: strength rooted in sacrifice. Yet that can have problematic consequences, as exemplified by the introduction to a collection of materials on women in and after World War II. In referring to “mothers and grandmothers,” the author comments: The selfless dedication of these women, which was (and is) accepted as being so self-evident and natural, was a major reason why Germany did not sink into deep despondency after the total defeat of 1945. It was these women who began with the work of cleaning up the ruins left by the men’s war. And it was these women who gave the losers emotional support and restored their confidence.10

If this is more than historical legend, such statements certainly need to be critiqued. The quality of Tüchtigkeit—often so loudly vaunted by the grandmothers themselves—cannot simply be accepted at face value as a reflection of historical reality; nor, from the standpoint of women’s politics, does it appear to be an attribute which female researchers could hold up to women as an attractive and serviceable token of identification. In both cases, female “diligence” needs to be examined with a critical eye. Moreover, this sort of linkage between women’s history and the history of everyday life ends up being at best a bit of a bore. Yet even in other respects, alltagsgeschichte and women’s history seem to belong together “naturally.” After all, both “everyday life” and “women” are categories associated with similar connotations: nonpolitical, private, informal, powerless, exposed. Both appear to stand for something that includes the “basic experiences of human life,” the entire sphere of reproduction; they stand for what is less alienated, more stable—and the element that is most similar between highly varied societies in very different climes and times. In other words: both often connote “nature.” It is this shared feature which harbors the danger of a mutual

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reinforcing tendency to stress ahistorical and universal features. The demand to deconstruct the category “women,” to historicize and regionalize it,11 is also valid when it comes to the category of everyday life— particularly the everyday history of women. Despite all objections to the “naturalness” and self-evident quality of the bond between women’s history and the history of everyday life, one fact should not be overlooked: a history of women, men, and their mutual relations, expanded into a history of gender, can indeed be investigated especially well within the specific matrix of the everyday life of the sexes. That is the sphere in which men and women—as acting subjects—repeatedly negotiate and renegotiate this relationship and its meaning in the context of their entire mode of life and culture. The prism of everyday life reveals how power relations, such as those in the family, are formed faceto-face, why they change, and in whose favor, and in what symbols and rituals they are expressed. The variety and diversity of forms which being male or female can assume are also manifested in this arena. Thus, beyond all clichés, Alltag is indeed a fertile field. But it demands careful and thoughtful plowing.

Everyday Life and Gender: How Much Theory Does Their History Require? Ten years ago in the Federal Republic, “everyday life” was a topic investigated in the main by sociologists; moreover, they went about that exploration in a way that resulted in the accusation of a “lack of empiricism” coming from the very highest quarters.12 In contrast with the sociology of everyday life, alltagsgeschichte has had to confront the charge that it is not just devoid of theory, but downright hostile to it.13 Admonitions about a false immediacy associated with doing the history of everyday life were also voiced early on within the subfield’s own ranks. Under the banner of “No everyday life without theory!” precautions were to be taken to counter the danger of a naive historiography of the folk.14 However, this criticism was leveled not only against certain so-called populist tendencies within the historiography of everyday life, but also against a conscious and reflected abandonment of comprehensive theoretical conceptions of social development and the use of conceptual constructs deriving from them. Everyday-life historians argued that theoretical constructions and their language failed to grasp historical reality and experience, which were far more contradictory and complex. For that reason, it was necessary to develop new and more open terms and concepts distilled directly from painstakingly exact microhistorical studies; attention should be given to the theory “endemic in the circum-

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stances.”15 In contrast, critics, especially from the camp of “historical social science,” have vigorously adhered to advocating the necessity for explicit (middle-range) theoretical models and terminologically precise concepts. Thus, a debate on theory has sprung up between traditional and everyday-oriented historiography—a controversy that has at least highlighted the fact that the history of everyday life poses questions which deserve to be taken seriously. Yet the history of gender tends to suffer from another problem: its models and claims are hardly noticed outside its own ranks, let alone taken seriously. The upshot is that only on one occasion to date have “the challenges of women’s history” in the Federal Republic resulted in a detailed, publicized debate and polemical exchange, namely, in response to the exclusion of male postdoctoral assistants (of male professors) from participating in a conference held by female historians.16 This lack of interest is all the more remarkable when you recall that the historiography of relations between the sexes, right from its inception, not only claimed a high level of theoretical refinement (alongside its natural affinity to the history of everyday life) by proposing a new comprehensive model for history, as sketched above, but also put forward broad theories designed to explain the universality of male dominance in diverse societies. First, female scholars in women’s studies, often veterans of the student movement of the late 1960s, tried to extend Marxist social and historical theory to encompass the work and experience of women and to explain the nature of their social oppression. This was manifest especially in their attempt to integrate female household labor and motherhood— that is, their work of reproduction—into the Marxist theory of labor value.17 Secondly, female social scientists, employing the concept and model of “patriarchy,” tried to evolve an alternative model of society—the aim was to help move the relation between the sexes, a source of oppression for women, to the very center of social conflicts and processes.18 In light of the universality of “patriarchy” in all known or developed societies, that theory also became part of a quest for locating the genesis of this relation for female historians. Once history’s fallen nature had been discovered and explained, it seemed there was a possibility to solve the problem of “patriarchy,” at least in theoretical terms.19

Everyday Life, Gender, and Historical Method The history of everyday life and the history of gender could learn something from each other, namely, that the practice of historiography poses theoretical problems which must be solved empirically. Alltagsgeschichte proceeds descriptively, trying to ward off the danger of inappropriate

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theoretical constructs. The history of gender wishes to account for ageold male dominance in the relation between the sexes. Both could team up productively if they attempted to grasp the relation between the sexes in historical everyday contexts using “thick descriptive” techniques, aiming at interpretation, explanation, and analysis.20 In such a conjoining, the history of everyday life would recognize gender as an object of legitimate research. In so doing, it would accept a category that is anything but self-evident and natural, and actually encompasses a slew of relations and circumstances in crying need of elucidation. The history of gender would cease squandering its energies in a bootless search for the origins of a universal “patriarchy”; instead, it would turn its scrutiny to examining concrete relations between the sexes. It would thus turn to an investigation of the “how” of male domination and, with its specific historical forms, would also be in a position to pinpoint and illuminate the specific historical causal factors underlying such a relation. This is the task of the history of gender as recently formulated by women historians.21 For several different reasons, the field of everyday history appears especially suited for tackling this task in a fruitful way. First of all, alltagsgeschichte is microhistory, that is, it engages in in-depth investigation of historical relations in that circumscribed ambit where persons behave concretely, and actually encounter one another. It becomes the history of gender precisely at the locus where men and women interact—at work, in the family, and on the street. Secondly, the history of everyday life is distinguished by the fact that the investigator can, with relative ease, empathize with the perspective of these actors (who also generate and account for relations): the historian proceeds by adopting a “systematic worm’s-eye view”22 in order to understand how these relations were perceived. Thus, in researching gender in the matrix of everyday life, the meaning which men and women attribute to their sexual affiliation and to the opposite sex is central. Moreover, the perspective of everyday history facilitates solutions to various key questions: what implications for action did women and men draw from these experiences, how did they utilize arenas for action, what changes did they initiate or implement, what conflicts arose from their relation, and what arrangements did they enter into? The history of gender as the history of everyday life thus refers to gender-specific historical experience, in the sense of perception and interpretation, biographical and historical desires and goals, everyday strategies and actions, the negotiating of a concrete relation between the sexes. The complexity of these relations between women and men shields both the history of everyday life and that of gender from an ever present danger: the error of misinterpreting “everyday life,” “woman,” or “nature” as universal categories. Like the concept of class society, a concept that claims all societies are patriarchies becomes little more than a mere label when contrasted with a differentiated description: one demonstrat-

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ing that men and women certainly did not enter into any sort of a simple relation of dominance—but rather a set of relations that was a complex web of oppression, resistance, agreements, stagings, and rituals.23 On the level of Alltag, there is a tendency to do away with the separation between social spheres such as economy, authority, politics, and culture. Their concerted impact on human affairs flows into a coherent and connected experience, and those affected react to this with that fabric of coherence which folklorists and anthropologists call “mode of life.” The relations men and women enter into in everyday life can be viewed as an element within such a mode of life—and thus prove to be a product of this total social experience and an expression of a comprehensive everyday culture. Which is to say: no longer must (or can) they be understood in isolated purity, as relations which are solely economic, ideological, or political.24 Such an approach gives rise to certain methodological problems. Female historians raise a totalizing claim in their efforts to comprehend the mode of life and life world of those investigated; yet the relational networks involved here are intermeshed and bewildering in complexity. It is consoling to realize that theory’s claims on history are not so severe and exacting—though one need not go so far as an envious sociologist who, in the light of the already described difficulties inherent in dealing with the concept “gender” in theoretical terms, noted (referring to E. P. Thompson) that in historiography, “empirical depth can signify a profound theoretical statement.”25 What is decisive is the definition of the word “depth”—or, as Geertz terms it, “thickness.” Moreover, where does theory begin: from what point on can a statement be regarded as “theoretical”? Indeed, what kind of generalizing statements can historians of everyday life actually make? If the cultural expressions of simple people form the object of our scrutiny, then we must be mindful that these are always interpretations which such individuals produce of their material and social world—in the form of language, objects, rituals, or otherwise reconstructible behavior. This means that even “what we call our data are really our own constructions of other people’s constructions of what they and their compatriots are up to.”26 Following this line of reasoning, to engage in the history of gender as the history of everyday life would basically amount to inquiring into the meaning of sexual affiliation and the relation with the opposite sex in various different societies at different times and in differing social groups—and then going on to develop a “meaningful explanation” for the interpretation that must be described.27 But does that endeavor constitute theory? Some anthropologists have suggested a conception where theory’s task is “to provide a vocabulary in which what symbolic action has to say about the role of culture in human life . . . can be expressed.”28 Conceptual precision is demanded for the interpretation of the interpreta-

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tion; the latter does not stand for itself, and we have no immediate access to it. But it evolves from “the most immediate level of observation.”29 And the level of generality which it may possibly attain (going all the way as far as theory) “grows out of the delicacy of its distinctions, not the sweeps of its abstractions.”30 By contrast, I find the circumstance rather odd that a number of workers in women’s studies are discontent and impatient because their field still lacks a feminist theory. I for one am unable to see the necessity for any feminist “total” theory, nor do I believe that our knowledge about gender is already powerful enough to develop such a theory.31 But this does not mean that historians should not try to work out explanatory models through which it becomes possible to formulate in terms of more general concepts the historical changes in male/female relations associated with the general drift of social change. Nor does it imply that they should not try to examine the utility of such general concepts, utilizing specific individual historical data and findings. In this vein, for example, Karin Hausen has criticized the concept of patriarchy and suggested analyzing the relation between the sexes in the nineteenth century within the framework of the opposition between individualism (of the burgher, the consumer, of personal achievement) and familialism (of the total mechanism of reproduction). This is a contrast in which women, by dint of their relegation to a socially “hidden” sphere of familial labor, became subject to a historically new form of discrimination; such discrimination cannot be explained by means of a universal thesis of patriarchy.32 The following section will sketch more precisely the potential fruits that can germinate from cooperative cross-fertilization between the history of gender and that of everyday life.

Everyday Life and Gender—Thematic Fields for Historical Research The alliance between the history of everyday life and that of gender can serve to dissolve (i.e., deconstruct) the fixed notions that we associate with various concepts and the phenomena they designate. One such construct is that of labor, still largely bound up with paid labor, either independent or dependent. Yet it is evident from everyday life that this form of work—for males, but especially in the case of women—constitutes only a portion of their total work load. Alongside and intertwined with paid labor, we find categories such as repairs, manual work around the house and in the garden, assistance in the neighborhood—and for females, the myriad tasks of housekeeping. Thus, men and women work in a diverse variety of labor relations, and their labor is not always express-

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ible in monetary values—indeed, it may have nothing to do with a labor “market.” Often, the same act of labor provides a direct service to the family (i.e., is work in the house) and simultaneously serves the purposes of employment, say in the case of doing housework for paying boarders or washing work clothes in mining settlements. There is a broad array of topics to which a history of everyday life animated by gender can turn its attention: along with the intercoupling of household work and gainful employment, there is the specific historical division of labor between the sexes in respect to both activities and working conditions, as well as the resulting differences in male and female work experience. From what wellsprings do men and women draw their pride in labor, with what elements of their work do they identify, and what motives lie behind their engagement in work or its avoidance?33 The family constitutes a second arena of shared uncertainty. Family history, as much as it would appear to include women’s history and gender history in an obvious and “natural” way, still has a tendency to view the family as a unit—a locus where women and men live together, work, consume, raise children (into women and men), a place of common bonds and shared interests. But alltagsgeschichte and the history of gender have shown that family may mean quite different things to men and women: women, for example, are often bound much more tightly to home and hearth—spatially, emotionally, and economically—than are men. For women, the family is their sole site of work, or is in any case an additional place of work, even if they are employed outside the home. The material goods at the disposal of the family are distributed among the individual family members in very unequal fashion; similarly, decisions about acquiring new goods are not negotiated between the sexes on an equal basis. In this regard, there are various patterns influenced by temporal, regional, and social-class factors, and these change historically over time. Hence, the notion of “family” should be made more dynamic (a) in respect to contemporaneous cultural differences in male/female relations and (b) in historical terms, where it is always necessary to investigate the reasons underlying changing gender relations during specific periods, probing the influences impinging on the family from the outside that play a role in such modifications. In particular, the family must finally come to be viewed as a locus where men and women confront each other—not just a place where shared familial strategies are developed, but also an arena in which there is a struggle for power and influence, a sparring ring where strength is measured and tested. Attention should be focused on how these relations of power manifest themselves differentially in different familial phases.34 In contradistinction to the family and everything that transpires there—and those (female) persons whose “natural place” it traditionally

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is—the public sphere is regarded as a domain that bears the male stamp and is shaped by reason, achievement, money, competition, power, and politics. This notion also needs to be reconceptualized or revised along more diverse lines. Who has access to the public sphere? Studies on the public sphere of women indicate that it is not only women’s affairs that are negotiated there; family affairs also spill over into this public realm, thus becoming community matters. Women participate in the traditional public sphere across a wide gamut ranging from gossip to various forms of neighborliness. Relevant investigations also reveal that men and women have certainly not lived in neatly separated spheres, one of which was centered on private life and was the female domain, while the other was a public, and thus eminently male, domain. Theoretical considerations and the findings of anthropological and everyday-historical studies suggest that both arenas, even where a gender-specific dimension is involved, enter into such diverse and varied combinations and intermixtures that it is impossible to postulate the existence of “separate spheres.” The task of gender history and the history of everyday life is not just to investigate the relation between “private life” and the “public sphere” in a given society, and how they intermingle; it is also necessary to explore the way in which men and women move through these spheres, where and how they encounter one another. A further question relates to the decisions actually made in these two realms and what their interplay (the ensemble of their mutual interdependence) resulted in historically. Finally, another question must be posed: how do the social power relations between the sexes change when their relations to the “spheres” and to each other (or their respective social function) undergo modification?35 There has been much talk here of conflict and struggle, dominance relations and their changes—in other words: power. Both the history of gender and women’s studies proceed on the basic assumption that social opportunities and resources are unequally distributed among the sexes, and that the gender relation is hierarchical, hegemonial. Gender poses itself as a social and historiographical problem precisely because we operate on the basis of the thesis that there is a form of structural domination, that is, male social power over women. One task on the agenda of the history of gender is to investigate the various forms and degrees of this power and its exercise—along with the changing patterns over historical time. In the concrete contexts of everyday life, where we are confronted with concrete women, men, and their web of interrelations, the question of power is manifested in quite different terms: we see it here as a question of women’s power. In this context, there are a number of useful neologisms in German based on the term “power”: power to provide, mother power, power to define, power to interpret.36 What types of power do women in a specific society or social

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group actually have at their disposal? And which power ultimately proves the stronger when it is a question of achieving one’s own interests—shortterm or long-term, openly or clandestinely? What impact does the form taken by the exercise of power have on the experience of power, the selfassurance and dignity of men and women? How is the exercise of power by one sex related to the use of power by the other? How does one sex adapt to the power of the other? How do these power relations change, and why?37

Everyday Life and Gender—an Open Relationship The historiography of gender and that of everyday life are not close kin, but they can and should enter into a carefully considered alliance. This does not always come about. One of the reasons is that a certain segment of what goes by the name “alltagsgeschichte” is really not much more than good standard social history—less oriented toward thick description and analysis, and more toward organizational and structural history. Another reason is that there are a whole series of genuine studies in everyday historical life that have remained “gender blind”: they fail to recognize either the absence of women’s experience, the influence of gender relations, or the masculinity of the workers. Yet since such historians are at least already busy plowing an important field, hopes are justified that they will ultimately unearth its “hidden fruits.”38 Moreover, the history of gender does not come into play only on the plane of everyday life, that is, the level of concrete encounter and practical action. Gender considerations are present everywhere: there are but few political decisions that have not been influenced by conceptions regarding men, women, and the relations between them; each of those decisions has a differential impact on men and women, thus also influencing their interrelation. A more difficult yet equally crucial task of gender history is to seek out the presence and traces of gender in the high echelons of the state or in the material constraints generated in government bureaucracies, in technology, and in the world economy. That task is complicated by the fact that as a rule, women have low visibility in such domains, just as the masculinity of the male actors would appear to step backstage, behind the curtain of their decisions. When Joan Scott proposes to investigate gender on the level of symbols, norms, institutions, and subjectivity, the envisaged enterprise involves the history of ideas and politics just as much as it does the history of everyday life.39 It is not only possible, but indeed necessary to seek out gender in the most diverse and varied sites external to Alltag—not in deference to some sort of principle of completeness, but rather in order to arrive at a proper

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picture of the power relations prevailing between men and women throughout the society. As Brecht reminds us: “The decision about the meat missing from your dinner plate is not made in the kitchen.”40 For that reason, workaday female power in the kitchen does not refer to anything more than that segment of women’s reality which can be experienced and is also amenable to shaping—and can only constitute a portion of what research on gender must ultimately examine. Thus, the boundaries of Alltag also determine the limits within which gender history can become involved with the history of everyday life.

Notes In addition to my heartfelt thanks to the editor, I would like to express sincere gratitude to Ulrich Borsdorf, Franz Brüggemeier, Karin Hausen, Regina Schulte, and Bernd Weisbrod for helpful comments on an earlier version of this paper. Several publications on historical women’s studies appeared after the completion of the manuscript in 1988 and could not be dealt with here, in particular: Ute Frevert, ed., Bürgerinnen und Bürger. Geschlechterverhältnisse im 19. Jahrhundert (Göttingen, 1988), and Gisela Bock, “Geschichte, Frauengeschichte, Geschlechtergeschichte,” Geschichte und Gesellschaft 14 (1988): 364–91. An interesting overview of the discussion on methodology can be found in Ursula Becher and Jörn Rüsen, eds., Weiblichkeit in geschichtlicher Perspektive (Frankfurt am Main, 1988). I was also unable to deal with Tracy C. Davis, Actresses as Working Women: Their Social Identity in Victorian Culture (London, 1991), and the recent representation-historical study of evolving mother constructs in North American culture in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries by Ann E. Kaplan, Motherhood and Representation (London, 1991). 1. Dorothee Wierling, Mädchen für alles. Arbeitsalltag und Lebensgeschichte städtischer Dienstmädchen um die Jahrhundertwende (Berlin and Bonn, 1987). 2. On the concept of everyday life, see the introduction in Kurt Hammerich and Michael Klein, eds., Materialien zur Soziologie des Alltags (Opladen, 1978), 7–21. 3. In the sense of everyday life as an “arena” for action. Cf. Norbert Schindler, “Spuren in die Geschichte der ‘anderen’ Zivilisation,” in Volkskultur, ed. Schindler and Richard von Dülmen (Frankfurt am Main, 1984), 13–77. See also Edward P. Thompson, “Folklore, Anthropology and Social History,” in The Indian Historical Review 3 (1978): 247–66. 4. See also Detlev Peukert (in reference to Wolf Lepenies on the relation between altered “modes of life” and epochal changes), “Neuere Alltagsgeschichte und historische Anthropologie,” in Historische Anthropologie, ed. Hans Süssmuth (Göttingen, 1984), 57–72. Alf Lüdtke was the first scholar in the German-speaking countries to write about the implications and possibilities of the history of everyday life; see his “Alltagswirklichkeit, Lebensweise und Bedürfnisartikulation,” Gesellschaft, no. 11 (Beiträge zur Marxschen Theorie)

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(Frankfurt am Main, 1978), 311–50, and Lüdtke, “The Historiography of Everyday Life: The Personal and and the Political,” in Culture, Ideology and Politics, ed. Raphael Samuel and Gareth Stedman Jones (London, 1983), 38–54; cf. likewise Lutz Niethammer, “Anmerkungen zur Alltagsgeschichte,” Geschichtsdidaktik 3 (1980): 231–42. 5. Sheila R. Johansson, “ ‘Herstory as History’: A New Field or another Fad?” in Liberating Women’s History, ed. Berencie A. Carroll (Urbana, 1976), 400– 430. 6. Joan Kelly, “The Social Relation of the Sexes,” in Kelly, Women, History and Theory (London and Chicago, 1984), 1–18 (originally published in Signs 1 [1976]); Natalie Z. Davis, “ ‘Women’s History’ in Transition: The European Case,” Feminist Studies 3 (Spring/Summer 1976): 83–103; Gerda Lerner, “The Challenge of Women’s History,” in Lerner, The Majority Finds its Past (Oxford and New York, 1979), 168–80. 7. Gisela Bock, “Historische Frauenforschung: Fragestellungen und Perspektiven,” in Frauen suchen ihre Geschichte, ed. Karin Hausen (Munich, 1983), 22– 60; Annette Kuhn, “Das Geschlecht—eine historische Kategorie? Gedanken zu einem aus der neueren Geschichtswissenschaft verdrängten Begriff,” in Frauen in der Geschichte, ed. Brehmer, Jacobi-Dittrich, Kleinau, and Kuhn, vol. 4 (Düsseldorf, 1983), 29–50; Claudia Opitz, “Der ‘andere Blick’ der Frauen in die Geschichte—Überlegungen zu Analyse- und Darstellungsmethoden feministischer Geschichtsforschung,” beiträge zur feministischen theorie und praxis, no. 11 (1984): 61–70. 8. Bock, “Historische Frauenforschung,” 29. 9. Wie wir das alles geschafft haben, the title of a study on single women in Berlin during the postwar period by Sibylle Meyer and Eva Schulze (Berlin, 1984). 10. Klaus-Jörg Ruhl, Unsere verlorenen Jahre. Frauenalltag in Kriegs- und Nachkriegszeit 1939–1949 in Berichten, Dokumenten und Bildern (Darmstadt, 1985), 9. 11. Gianna Pomata, “Die Geschichte der Frauen zwischen Anthropologie und Biologie,” Feministische Studien, no. 2 (1983): 113–27. See likewise Michelle Z. Rosaldo, “The Use and Abuse of Anthropology: Reflections on Feminism and Cross-cultural Understanding,” Signs 5 (1980): 389–417. 12. Norbert Elias, “Zum Begriff des Alltags,” in Materialien zur Soziologie des Alltags, ed. Hammerich and Klein, 25. 13. Compare the discussion on the history of everyday life at the conference of historians (Historikertag) held in Berlin in 1984, published as study materials of the FernUniversität Hagen, “Geschichte von unten—Geschichte von innen”— Kontroversen um die Alltagsgeschichte, ed. F.-J. Brüggemeier and J. Kocka (Fernuniversität Hagen, 1985); for a critical view, see there especially the contribution by Hans-Ulrich Wehler, “Königsweg zu neuen Ufern oder Irrgarten der Illusionen? Die westdeutsche Alltagsgeschichte: Geschichte ‘von innen’ und ‘von unten,’ ” 17–47. Jürgen Kocka has also voiced his skepticism regarding the everyday-historical approach; see his “Historisch-anthropologische Fragestellungen—ein Defizit der historischen Sozialwissenschaft? Thesen zur Diskussion, in Historische Anthropologie, ed. Süssmuth, 73–83. Other critics include Detlev

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Peukert, “Arbeiteralltag—Mode oder Methode,” in Arbeiteralltag in Stadt und Land. Neue Wege der Geschichtsschreibung, ed. Heiko Haumann (Berlin, 1982), 8–39, and Klaus Tenfelde, “Schwierigkeiten mit dem Alltag,” Geschichte und Gesellschaft 10 (1984): 376–94. Cf. also the introduction to the present volume by Alf Lüdtke. 14. Niethammer, “Anmerkungen zur Alltagsgeschichte,” 240. 15. In this connection, compare the essay by Hans Medick in this volume. 16. Seen from this angle in 1981 in Bielefeld; cf. the corresponding documentation in beiträge zur feministischen theorie und praxis, no. 5, Frauengeschichte (Munich, 1981), 119–27, and Geschichtsdidaktik 5 (1982): 99–109, 325–30. 17. See, for example, Silvia Kontos, “Hausarbeit, Geburtenkontrolle und Frauenautonomie,” Gesellschaft. Beiträge zur Marxschen Theorie 14 (Frankfurt am Main, 1981), 12–29, and Veronika Bennholdt-Thomsen, “Subsistenzproduktion und erweiterte Produktion. Ein Beitrag zur Produktionsweisendiskussion,” ibid., 30–51. See also Ursula Beer, “Marxismus in Theorien der Frauenarbeit. Plädoyer für eine Erweiterung der Reproduktionsanalyse,” Feministische Studien, no. 2 (1983): 136–46, and Regina Becker-Schmidt, “Anmerkungen zum Artikel von Ursula Beer,” Feministische Studien, no. 1 (1984): 178–81, and Beer’s reply, 181–83. Götz Rohwer, “Zur politischen Ökonomie der Hausarbeit,” Leviathan 13 (1985) 187–211; for a critique of attempts by him and others to apply the Marxian model to housework, see Barbara Sichtermann, “Gegen eine politische Ökonomie der Hausarbeit,” Leviathan 13 (1985): 212–18. 18. Kate Millett, Sexus und Herrschaft. Die Tyrannei des Mannes in unserer Gesellschaft (Munich, 1971; originally published as Sexual Politics [New York, 1969]); Shulamith Firestone, Frauenbefreiung und sexuelle Revolution (Frankfurt am Main, 1975; originally published as The Dialectic of Sex [New York, 1971]); Juliet Mitchell, Frauenbefreiung (Münster, 1978; originally published as Woman’s Estate [Harmondsworth, 1971]). 19. Gerda Lerner, “Eine feministische Theorie der Historie,” in Die ungeschriebene Geschichte. Historische Frauenforschung, Dokumentation 5. Historikerinnentreffen, ed. Gruppe Wiener Historikerinnen (Vienna, 1984), 404–11. Lerner develops a thesis here on the genesis of the patriarchy in Mesopotamia between 7000 and 3200 B.C. as the organization by the state of male hegemony over women and the domination by some men over males in other groups. 20. The term “thick description” is derived from the technical vocabulary of the anthropologist Clifford Geertz; see his The Interpretation of Cultures: Selected Essays (New York, 1973), especially his introductory essay, “Thick Description: Toward an Interpretive Theory of Culture,” 3–30. See also the contributions by Alf Lüdtke and Hans Medick in the present volume. 21. For example, in the discussion on Gerda Lerner’s theses during the convention of women historians in Vienna (see n. 19). A critique of the concept “patriarchy” can be found in Karin Hausen, “Patriarchat—Vom Nutzen und Nachteil eines Konzepts für Frauengeschichte und Frauenpolitik,” Journal für Geschichte, no. 5 (1986): 12–21, 58; Joan W. Scott, “Gender: A Useful Category of Historical Analysis,” American Historical Review 91 (1986): 1053–75, where the author states: “We must ask more often how things happened, in order to find

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out why they happened” (p. 1067); Scott, “Women in History: The Modern Period,” Past and Present (November 1983): 141–57, esp. her criticism of and remarks on methodology, 149ff. 22. Schindler, “Spuren in die Geschichte,” 20. 23. E. P. Thompson describes the everyday relations of domination between the “people” and their “rulers” in similar terms; see “Folklore, Anthropology and Social History.” 24. This can be contrasted with the concept of the “history of society,” which attempts from a macroperspective to interrelate the spheres of society, economy, politics, and culture; see Hans-Ulrich Wehler, Deutsche Gesellschaftsgeschichte, vol. 1 (Munich, 1987), 28ff. 25. Judith Stacey and Barrie Thorne, “Feministische Revolution in der Soziologie?” Feministische Studien, no. 2 (1985): 118–30. 26. Geertz, The Interpretation of Cultures, 14. 27. See Scott, “Gender: A Useful Category,” 1067. 28. Geertz, The Interpretation of Cultures, 27. Maya Nadig moves in a similar direction when, taking issue with a disconnected theory about women and their behavior, she comments on processes of theory formation in ethnology: “The new theory of culture attempts . . . to determine the spaces in which Indians move and to derive from this appropriate patterns of interpretation for their behavior.” See “Symposium: weibliche Existenz und feministische Interpretation. Eine Methodendiskussion,” in Frauen und Macht. Der alltägliche Beitrag der Frauen zur Politik des Patriarchats, ed. Barbara Schaeffer-Hegel ([West] Berlin, 1984), 102. 29. Geertz, The Interpretation of Cultures, 28. 30. Ibid., 25. 31. This does not mean that current theories should not (and cannot) be critiqued and refuted on the basis of available knowledge. The contributions quoted in n. 18 above also move in this direction. For an example of a thorough critique of Marxist theory on women’s liberation, see also Verena Stolcke, “Das Erbe sichern. Die Naturalisierung der gesellschaftlichen Ungleichheit,” Das Argument, no. 163 (1987): 329–46. 32. Hausen, “Patriarchat,” 58. 33. A still fresh and clear example of an exceptionally narrow and traditional concept of work can be found in Klaus Tenfelde, ed., Arbeit und Arbeitserfahrung in der Geschichte (Göttingen, 1986). In his introduction, he notes that “working people” (!) discovered with industrialization that their lives had been “split into the opposition of toil in the workplace and a domestic-familial existence” (!) (p. 5). The great variation in work experiences possible even in a single subsegment of the working class (miners) is dealt with by Michael Zimmermann, Schachtanlage und Zechenkolonie. Leben, Arbeit und Politik in einer Arbeitersiedlung 1880–1980 (Essen, 1987), 40ff.; on the gender-specific division of labor and women’s work in the family, Zimmermann, Schachtanlage und Zechenkolonie, 114ff. Female historians interested in women’s history underscored early on the importance of housework for the work experience of women; cf. Gisela Bock and Barbara Duden, “Arbeit aus Liebe, Liebe als Arbeit. Zur Entstehung der Hausarbeit im Kapitalismus,” in Frauen und Wissenschaft (Berlin, 1977), 118– 99. A research project then in progress was introduced at the Bonn conference of

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women historians in 1985: Herrad Bussemer, Sibylle Meyer, Barbara Orland, and Eva Schulze, “Zur Sozialgeschichte der Haushaltstechnik im 20. Jahrhundert,” in Frauenmacht in der Geschichte, ed. Jutta Dalhoff, Uschi Frey, and Ingrid Schöll (Düsseldorf, 1986), 310–16. For Great Britian, see Caroline Davidson, A Woman’s Work is Never Done: A History of Housework in the British Isles 1650–1950 (London, 1982). 34. Heidi I. Hartman, “The Family as a Locus of Gender, Class and Political Struggle: The Example of Housework,” Signs 6 (1981): 366–94. In the Germanspeaking area, it would appear that the recognition of divergent and conflicting interests within families has still not yet gained complete acceptance, as reflected by the special issue devoted to “Familie, Haushalt, Wohnen” of Geschichte und Gesellschaft 14, no. 1 (1988). Families and households there appear as formations that are substructured, but which in the final analysis tend to make decisions and take action on a unified basis. For several counterexamples drawn from research on the history of everyday life, see Roman Sandgruber, “Innerfamiliale Einkommens- und Konsumaufteilung,” in Ehe, Liebe, Tod, ed. Peter Borscheid and Hans J. Teuteberg (Münster, 1983), 135–49; Anne-Katrin Einfeld, “Zwischen alten Werten und neuen Chancen. Häusliche Arbeit von Bergarbeiterfrauen in den fünfziger Jahren,” in “Hinterher merkt man, daß es richtig war, daß es schiefgegangen ist,” ed. Lutz Niethammer (Bonn and Berlin, 1983), 149–90. For a volume which was the product of joint efforts between anthropologists and historians, see Hans Medick and David Sabean, eds., Interest and Emotion: Essays on the Study of Family and Kinship (Cambridge, 1984); also informative is the study on postwar Berlin by Sibylle Meyer and Eva Schulze, Von Liebe sprach damals keiner. Familienalltag in der Nachkriegszeit (Munich, 1985). 35. On the (village) female public sphere, see Regina Schulte, “Bevor das Gerede zum Tratsch wird. Das Sagen der Frauen in der bäuerlich-dörflichen Welt Bayerns im 19. Jahrhundert,” Journal für Geschichte, no. 2 (1985): 16–21; on the “separate spheres” debate, cf. Rosaldo, “The Use and Abuse of Anthropology,” esp. 396ff.; Joan Kelly, “The Doubled Vision of Feminist Theory,” in Kelly, Women, History and Theory, 51–64, esp. 56ff.; Elizabeth H. Pleck, “Two Worlds in One: Work and Family,” Journal of Social History 10 (1976–77): 178–95. All three authors here argue against a view that posits a strict separation between the private and public spheres, ascribing females to one, males to the other. For a study of the “interplay” between the two spheres on the micro- and macrolevel, see Leonore Davidoff and Catherine Hall, Family Fortunes: Men and Women of the English Middle Class, 1750–1850 (London, 1987). 36. I.e., Versorgungsmacht, Muttermacht, Definitionsmacht, Deutungsmacht. 37. As far as I am aware, the history of everyday life has not as yet made any significant contribution to these problems. The “power question” is raised indirectly in the still excellent anthology by Claudia Honegger and Bettina Heintze, eds., Listen der Ohnmacht. Zur Sozialgeschichte weiblicher Widerstandsformen (Frankfurt am Main, 1981). The volume edited by Barbara Schaeffer-Hegel, Frauen und Macht, concentrates principally on the relation to political power, maternal power, and the experience of victimization as a result of male power. The anthology Frauenmacht in der Geschichte, ed. Dalhoff et al., employs the term “power” solely as a collective label for a large spectrum of research in

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women’s history. In contrast, many of the representative studies cited in n. 33 and 34 above also contain insights into the nature of concrete power relations between the sexes. 38. For a critique of French structuralists, see Susan Mosher Stuard, “The Annales School and Feminist History: Opening Dialogue with the American Stepchild,” Signs 6 (1981): 135–43. To my knowledge, there is as yet no systematic investigation of gender blindness in research on everyday history in the Federal Republic. An intriguing new collection examining masculinity as a historical and cultural construct is Michael Roper and John Tosh, eds., Manful Assertions: Masculinities in Britain Since 1800 (London, 1991). 39. Joan W. Scott, “Gender: A Useful Category,” 1067f. Scott’s special interest here is in a political history which reflects gender and language as a symbolic system constituting gender. Cf. Scott, “On Language, Gender and Working-Class History,” International Labor and Working Class History (hereafter ILWCH) no. 31 (1987): 1–13, and the subsequent commentaries to her critique of Gareth Stedman Jones, Rethinking Chartism (after which Scott went on to expand her own views on the significance of language). The criticisms move in two directions: (1) the danger of overestimating the value of language vis-à-vis reality, of ideas over against action (Bryan D. Palmer, ILWCH, no. 31, 14–23), and (2) the danger of displacing subjectivity (and its replacement) by “language” as an objective system (Christine Stansell, ILWCH, no. 31, 24–29). It is noteworthy that the commentators barely touch on Scott’s argument that language must be analyzed because of the gender construction which underpins it. 40. Bertolt Brecht, Die Mutter, choir, scene 1, in Brecht, Gesammelte Werke, vol. 2 (Frankfurt am Main, 1975), 827.

6 POPULAR CULTURE AND WORKERS’ CULTURE AS SYMBOLIC ORDERS COMMENTS ON THE DEBATE ABOUT THE HISTORY OF CULTURE AND EVERYDAY LIFE Wolfgang Kaschuba

“History’s Interior”

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O THE PUBLIC, much of the discussion in recent years about the history of everyday life may have looked like a mere heated exchange of catchwords and verbal blows. Often enough, the specialized discourse lacked the requisite degree of comprehensibility, and the specialists engaged in it the ability to communicate. Nonetheless, those controversies were and still are far more than any mere dispute about labels for certain concepts and their nuances. Very basic questions of historiography and social history lie at the center of the debate, and these are also interlinked with political positions on topical issues of the day. It is a matter of fundamental perspective whether historical everyday life is described as a mere “situation,” a passive swimming along with the current of constraints, obligations, routines, reduced to behavior that is only “stereotypical reproduction” of given and preset cultural patterns (Maurice Godelier)—or whether one sees everyday life as an arena where active and creative abilities are aimed at achieving something in material and social reproduction. In the latter case, everyday life then signifies a special mode of (re)appropriating experience—the social spaces in which

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it occurs and modes of experiencing—and how these are coordinated within cultural orders in the life world of individuals. A decision must thus be made: should everyday life be conceptualized as a reflexlike, selfrepeating mechanism, controlled mainly from the outside—or rather as a concatenation of actions, a dense sequence of questions involving human decisions and orientations, a succession of acts where individuals interact and communicate, in which social behavior is both shaped by and creates its own rules? Conceived in this way, everyday life would not be a historical and social “special sphere with its own structure and a certain degree of autonomy,” a false construction whose danger Norbert Elias correctly cautioned against over a decade ago.1 Rather, Alltag would stand for an experiential space, rooted in the life world, where individual need and social “common sense” must repeatedly come to new agreements and arrangements within a horizon of values that for its part is “subject to historically constructed and historically defined criteria for judgment.”2 For a long time, this seemingly remote “interior” of history was regarded as virtually inaccessible terrain in terms of methodology and source materials, especially when it came to the experiences and life worlds of the preindustrial lower classes. The historian Jürgen Kocka felt that even in work on social history done in the late 1970s, one could often note the absence of any attempt to engage in a more penetrating “explanation of the transformation in reality” in the sense of such historical horizons of experience.3 But he remained restrained in his conclusions at the time; in the discussion about a new history of everyday life, Kocka later cautioned scholars against any “impractical inflating of the concept of ‘culture’ ” and “a new kind of holism” in historical research focused on the life world.4 Yet where else except in the experiential context of life worlds, families, and groups could one explore what was actually changing in a given case within the tension field between historical “spheres for experience and horizons of expectation” (Reinhart Koselleck)? And how else could this be accomplished except by attempting to decode cultural practices* and values? This necessarily subsumes questions pertaining to temporal, spatial, and social validity. Most importantly, such an approach does not entail any abandonment of the “ ‘big questions’ regarding the formation of states and classes, religions and churches, industrialization and capitalism, nation and revolution, the basic causes and consequences of National Socialism.”5 In fact, the most important research fields and foci in * The terms “practice” and “praxis” will be used interchangeably here to render the German Praxis.—TRANS.

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the historical analysis of everyday life, say in working-class history, women’s history, and Nazi history, intersect with such “grand” and large-scale historical dimensions. However, they do include a critical interrogation and reexamination of the practice of historians: were such contours indeed the actual development lines of “history”—or were they at times only those of a “great” German historiography (“mighty” in its power to shape and determine definitions)? Compared with the field of history, the discipline of modern folk life/ popular culture studies (Volkskunde) would seem to have fewer qualms about close contact with everyday-historical perspectives, though its interest and involvement in such perspectives has been varied. This depends on the respective special interests and theoretical orientation of individual institutes and institutions, and the extent to which they have remained faithful to their traditional subjects and fields of research. It should be recalled that many of these scholarly traditions in the field of folklore and folk-life research already included a certain limited involvement with aspects of the study of everyday life—though often distorted by refraction through the prism of the old dichotomy between “mental” (geistig) and “material” culture, and not developed in a systematic sense. Nowadays, there can be no doubt that questions pertaining to historical and contemporary everyday culture occupy a central place in the program of a discipline of Volkskunde as a social science.6 In the meanwhile, a consensus has formed, over and beyond all differences: the everyday perspective, as a key to (historical) realities, is a solid component in the essential methodological foundations of folkloristic research. This orientation of the discipline and its traditional affinity with research “in small fields” suggest to folklorists that in the dispute about everyday life and its analysis, Martin Broszat was probably correct when he said he could sense very little evidence of any presumed “ ‘antianalytical mood’ in certain segments of the history of everyday life.” He argues that a great deal of the criticism alleging that research on everyday life is positivistic and nonrepresentative misses its mark, since “there are a whole series of important questions in social science (regarding mentality, subjective experience, social structure) that can hardly be approached utilizing quantitative methods,” and often indeed almost presuppose a microanalytical approach in methodological terms.7 In that sense, though one can agree with Hans-Ulrich Wehler’s call for the “inclusion of the history of everyday life as part of the social history of all strata and classes,” it is necessary to go a step further and demand a reversal of its logic as well: social history must also include the everyday history of all strata and classes.

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Concepts of Culture Closely associated with this perspective in the history of everyday life, a new way of looking at social history has crystallized: one which sees history especially in terms of “culture.” Its focus is the cultural praxis of historical subjects as a complex historical reality. This approach delves into the respective abilities of subjects to shape life and possibilities for action within a specific life world. It also tries to shed light on the largescale, encompassing symbolic orders of such life-world systems—modes of experiencing, rules for behavior, meanings and values. In particular, two major systems of order were discovered which have coordinated and organized the “life of the many” in its everyday context during the modern period: popular culture as a model for experience and behavior in late feudal society, and workers’ culture in the era of industrial capitalism. Scholars are largely agreed that this is not simply a twostage model of lower-class cultures where one supersedes the other in temporal sequence. Despite the differences in the nature of their specific formation, there were a number of synchronisms, overlappings, and transformation processes that served to create a complicated amalgam, an interlacing and juxtaposition of elements from popular culture and workers’ culture in the nineteenth century. This is why the investigation of mutual affinities and shared features takes on such a special importance: questions of shared cultural forms and traditions, similar patterns of value and self-interpretation, related structures especially on the level of “little tradition” (Redfield) and longue durée (Fernand Braudel). But the concepts of popular culture and workers’ culture remain quite controversial as categories in social and cultural history. Critics have repeatedly pointed to the internal social and cultural heterogeneity evident in the historical complexes which these terms are meant to circumscribe. It is argued that if the terms have any validity, then it is only in the plural: as a summary designation for rather differing variants of popular and workers’ culture(s) even within a specific formation of economy and society. Regional differences, the argument goes, play just as important a role as internal processes of differentiation and distancing between various groups in the lower strata. The differences between a farmer and a day laborer toiling beside him in the eighteenth century were just as great as those separating a skilled from an unskilled worker a century later. There can be no doubt about the necessity for making such differentiations and historicizations. But there is still room for cautious use of these two concepts. They seem to be quite necessary and meaningful as largescale categories under which to subsume the various individual social groups and systems of cultural praxis—historical screens, as it were, on

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which one can, for the first time, pose and probe certain basic questions regarding the makeup of lower-class culture and its transformations behind the specific historical practices of groups and classes projected there. When it comes to “workers”—since they appear to be more closely associated via relations of production and their social situation—it is perhaps easier to accept this nexus in terms of the idea of an articulated “class culture” than in the case of the ideologically loaded concept of “folk.” On the one hand, this may be justifiable; on the other, however, “folk” represents more than just an ideological and contrived, consciously class-neutral concept that has been projected into history. Rather, we find that the concept of “folk” or “people” has been repeatedly reappropriated and used in the modern period by social groups themselves—groups which consciously laid claim to the notion as a formula to designate their own identity, and as a framework for locating themselves in social reality. In certain situations, it obviously functioned to signify a group-transcending collective “we”—concretely expressed in specific attributes of economic and social oppression, similar experiences and kindred needs, commonly shared values and collective “structures of feeling” (Raymond Williams). “Folk”—as detached and distinguished from symbols of power, forms of authority and domination, hegemonic culture, and present in the concrete, situation-rooted awareness of systems of reference and experience that are different and completely one’s own—does not designate a seamless inner unity. Rather, it refers to a commonly shared framework of reference consisting of attitudes and convictions adhered to in contrast with a dominant stratum of “those on top.” Importantly though, more is involved here than just a set of consciously held, frontline positions in social and economic conflicts. This shared frame of reference has another key component: manners and modes of behavior that are experienced more in terms of social distance, as it were, than political contradiction—ranging from on-the-job labor activity to forms of association, from body language to generative patterns of behavior. Research in recent years specifically focusing on the history of everyday life has furnished a diverse body of evidence to substantiate the thesis of the “folk” as a kind of counterforce, an opposite horizon. For example, there have been new studies on legal and social conflicts between peasant groups and feudal authority in the modern period, investigations of resistance pitted against the processes of state formation and authoritarian discipline in the period between the age of Napoleon and the 1848 revolution; more generally, one can point to work on the history of protest and early working-class history.8 Figures and fronts of conflict repeatedly crystallize when it is a matter of bread supply or taxes, bans on association or customary rights, freedom of speech or the right to vote. In

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such figures and fronts, shared elements in experience and attitude appear to bridge the gulf separating different groups in the lower class, at least temporarily. For the most part, these studies could hardly be accused of furthering a class-neutral concept of folk. On the contrary, much of this research focuses explicitly on internal processes of social differentiation in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries and makes it amply clear to what degree the compass needle in the subjective social consciousness of lowerstratum groups shifts from situation to situation, at times pointing more in the direction a unified “folk” (in the sense of a compromise coalition), at times spinning back toward its internal forces of tension and disunity. How else could we make sense out of those quite everyday forms of resistance and norm violation in the peasant economy of feudalism—if not as an expression of “collective dispositions” in village society?9 In the system of feudal socage, there was no possibility for “going slow” or doing consciously poorer work as an individual—such tactics could be realized only when coordinated between all affected tenants. The family of the day laborer stood no chance of successfully poaching and stealing wood in manorial forests if their more wealthy peasant neighbor—over and beyond all other conflicts of interest between them—did not feel a greater sense of solidarity with the social logic and moral legitimacy of this strategy for survival than with the logic of law and order of the manor and its lords. Without being buried or forgotten, the internal structure of conflict between the various groups of producers appeared repeatedly to be relativized by the superimposition of that external frontline. This dialectical relation between the ability for conflict and consensus was generated from perspectives on problems with a differing “focal length,” of which one was focused on the dimension termed “folk” and “people.” This also implies a conception of “popular culture” as a relational concept, not designed to invoke some sort of artificial historical “unified culture from below,” but rather only pointing up kindred possibilities for experience and language—“a kind of minimal platform of understanding between the group culture of those segments of the population subject to domination.”10

The Culture of the Producers as the Culture of Material Praxis My intention here is to suggest possible lines of argumentation for a meaningful approach to the concepts of popular culture and workers’ culture, though without discussing them in more basic terms; a more detailed treatment can be found elsewhere.11 Rather, I would like to turn to several suggestive ideas dealing with the last-mentioned aspect: the mean-

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ing of popular culture and workers’ culture as historical-symbolic systems of order. There is no doubt that precisely in this regard, there are long-term ongoing processes of transformation between popular and proletarian culture. These processes act like sluices to curb the force of those cultural transitions and ruptures in early industrialization that people had to grapple with and overcome at that time—say when relocating from the countryside to urban areas or shifting from an agrarian sphere of production to a commercial or industrial one. In addition, numerous traditions of folk culture continue to have a lasting influence in the group cultures of the industrial working class, integrated into cultural patterns and values, collective mentalities and dispositions. To that extent, it is more than conjecture to wonder whether “plebian culture was thus not only the predecessor of proletarian culture”—proletarian culture may also have been “in many respects the successor and heir to the older plebian culture.”12 Glancing at the historical landscape of the nineteenth century, the points of contact and analogies would indeed appear to be quite close: the largely shared spaces for living and residence in rural industrial regions or at the urban periphery, which socially and in terms of infrastructure had not yet been thoroughly organized in industrial terms, but often still combined agrarian, craft artisan, and industrial milieus in all conceivable admixtures; the loci of the “nonbourgeois” public sphere, between the pub, courtyard and street; the similarity in the social configurations structuring and organizing everyday life, such as the dense network of occupational groups and kinship relations, or forms of sociability and festival culture; the demonstrative communicative styles of gesture, body language, and voice—styles which actually melt and merge, from the “outsider” perspective of the burgher class, into the expressive forms of a single social body, namely, the “rabble,” the “mob”;13 and finally, the presence of elements of a common shared experience of oppression and shared defensive stance in individual acts of resistance and collective protest. Above all, popular culture and workers’ culture have been significantly shaped by their common purpose of “reproduction of life itself as well as the material means for life.”14 To that extent, they both appear to be similarly constituted historically and modeled along similar cultural lines as producer cultures, as cultures of material praxis. Marshall Sahlins has formulated this characteristic in general terms from the vantage point of historical anthropology: “Culture may set conditions to the historical process, but it is dissolved and reformulated in material practice, so that history becomes the realization, in the form of society, of the actual resources people put into play.”15 This formulation of cultural dynamics can also be applied in a spatial

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and temporal sense: a large proportion of all social interaction and communication still took place in and around the workplace. It was shaped culturally in terms of techniques of work, work rhythms, forms of cooperation and patterns of regeneration, relations among coworkers, and collective attitudes of conflict directed against hierarchies and experiences of authority and domination. There can be no doubt that these patterns of behavior also had an impact far beyond the place of work and immediate work situation, impinging on the entire web of cultural and communicative behavior, while being deepened and reflected upon by the both socialized and socializing environment of fellow workers, families, and reference groups. This definition qua producers’ culture seems to have been sketched out to date more distinctly for popular culture than for workers’ culture. The partial reason for that lies in a continuation of traditional lines of research, such as studies on the role of customs in the work culture of skilled craftsmen. A second factor is that this was a natural development from the historically given structuring of preindustrial society and its division into respective groups of producers; those groups appeared simultaneously to be partial cultures or subcultures in themselves. A similar situation prevails when it comes to analyzing village customs and the rites of passage: these were generally described as deriving their structure from the annual agrarian work cycle or the various stations of a biographical path, itself structured by changing work roles and skills. In contrast, the specific research perspective that developed in investigating workers’ culture gave rise to a different situation with other emphases and foci. The center of the research stage was occupied for a long time not by workers’ everyday culture, but by the culture of the workers’ movement. In retrospect, it seems almost ironic that although the intention was to define the practice of a group specifically characterized as producers, that group subsequently was not described in terms of its skills geared to economic production and its achievements on the level of social reproduction, but rather within the narrow focus of another dimension: the politically oriented cultural praxis of “the movement.” Symptomatic of this approach is the fact that in research on the culture and mode of life of groups of workers, questions about generative patterns, material living conditions, and social-psychological attitudes were not considered as obvious a part of the “cultural praxis” of workers as they were in the case of groups of peasants or small traders. In the meanwhile, a great deal has changed, but scrutinizing relevant recent research as a whole, it is obvious that one element is still lacking: that systematic context and connective web which places the various facets of “working life” within the framework of a comprehensive analysis of social identity, and which reveals the shared features of the production of historical experience hidden behind the historical multiplicity of cul-

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tural practices specific to occupation, gender, and age. What cultural forms constitute the locus for the processes of mediation between the socioeconomic system and biographical experience in the individual’s life world? How are basic historical experiences translated into patterns of interpretation specific to an era? How are they converted into cultural praxis? How is it possible to reconstruct popular culture and workers’ culture as sociogenetic and psychogenetic processes of development? Finally, alongside their historicity, there is also the question of the topicality and current relevance of such stratum-specific forms of perception and modes of life: can one find their traces in recent history and in the present? I believe there are still numerous questions here that remain open and unanswered—unless they are grappled with, the concept of the history of everyday life will continue to evince certain gaps and arbitrary distinctions. One can often note an evasive tendency to “direct research to those eras in which social action based on experience in one’s life world still functioned within the context of a cohesive whole.” Or conversely, there is an attempt to separate the “large-scale” socioeconomic and political structures from the “little” aspects of life world and everyday culture.16 Segments of everyday culture are still frequently documented without going to the trouble of a corresponding analysis of their systematic ordering and their inclusion in more comprehensive contexts. Naturally, this is difficult terrain, since the various different social groups it contains are much harder to differentiate one from the other there than when looked at against the background of sociostructural data or in small, closed social milieus. “Culture,” conceived as a constant process of communication and interaction between and among strata and classes, is resistant to the drawing of simple boundaries. One cannot establish with a single stroke of the pen what is Eigensinn and what “systematic logic”—or which habitus is popular, and which is proletarian or bourgeois.17 A glance at English, French, Italian, or Scandinavian research can serve to confirm that the enterprise of “cultural analysis” using a differentiated set of instruments is both possible and fruitful. Researchers there have dealt much more intensively with the theoretical conceptions of popular culture and class cultures sketched years ago by scholars such as Raymond Williams, Edward P. Thompson, Peter Burke, and Michel Vovelle. One upshot of this has been a far stronger orientation there to questions of the external shaping and internal signification of historical identity: a definition of identity not only in the sense of consciousness of economic situation and political locus, but especially in the sense of cultural ability to act. Historical experience itself and its conversion into cultural forms and signs are utilized as keys to decipher historical symbolic languages and class-specific images of the universe.18 It should be noted that this emphasis placed on the symbolic character

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of culture is by no means tantamount to a shift toward theories of structuralism or symbolic interactionism. Such analyses do not seek the “common human element” in history or dehistoricized typologies of behavior. Rather, they are concerned with illuminating the cultural “reality” of symbolically shaped social praxis. Culture, especially of the historical lower strata, was constituted as a symbolic order and reproduces itself ever anew in such symbolic forms. For this it does not require any supplemental theoretical creation of meaning. As a system of experience and action, culture itself “lived,” was passed on, explained itself within language and the configurations of everyday communication and interaction. Only in this context can one concretize the class-specific connection between culture and mode of life: “culture” seen as a delimitable historical horizon of experience and action where the “cognitive, expressive and normative components of reality” are simultaneously reflected.19

Identity via Work That characteristic property of popular culture and workers’ culture— namely, to be constituted directly in material cultural praxis and to be manifested as producer cultures—is also reflected in corresponding structures of value and identity. The cultural praxis of the individual and the group are not shaped by one’s title, education, or occupational training (and even in the case of small farmers or craftsmen, their material possessions have less bearing on this)—rather, the salient formative factors are “identity via work” and the direct linking of the results of material and symbolic reproduction. Despite all differences and modifications in the economic and social situation of the lower-stratum groups, this reference system seems to possess a long-standing validity extending beyond groups and strata. I would like to try to specify in greater detail three comprehensive social and temporal coordinates of this “identity via work”: first, the ethical-moral justification; second, sociobiographical formation, and finally, the symbolic political function of a culture of work that is constituted through physical experience and communicated through body language. An initial line can be traced proceeding from the question above regarding a stratum- or class-specific ethos of work. Viewed historically, the self-image of the first generations of factory workers was closely interlinked with the social demands on their physical ability to work and perform. Based on experience parameters drawn from a “world of manual labor,” that is, the special value of having a good physical constitution as a prerequisite for one’s ability to work and the special productivity of manual labor, their understanding of personality, existential independence, and social competence to act was rooted primarily in the ability to

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prove that they were able-bodied and could earn a living by themselves. From that point, this principle branched out, ramifying into numerous value scales, such as specific forms of work discipline, technical skill on the job, the social ability to cooperate, and the representation of group consciousness in the work process.20 Looked at purely from the outside, many of these values initially seem to resemble that bourgeois catalog of values for the “proper worker” drawn up everywhere in Europe before and during the early period of industrialization; its purpose was to carry through with the “new economy” utilizing suitable programs for regulating time and labor discipline. These complex arrangements aimed at an external “civilizing” of the worker, schooling him or her in the values of punctuality, thrift, obedience, cleanliness, and inner “cultivation” in the sense of the formation of personal values and emotions. This is well documented in a broad array of bourgeois educational concepts ranging from factory codes to the statutes and rules of relief associations, savings associations, countless memoranda and essays, all the way to the first early programs for formal education.21 Bourgeois values and culture aspired to gain universal validity for all of society and to mold the normative image of the “modern” worker, at least in the form of bourgeois “secondary virtues” such as diligence and performance of duty. The concept of “embourgeoisement” also belongs in this context.22 After all, it was coined at that same time, around the middle of the last century, and then employed as a label to characterize the gradual steps taken to integrate groups of workers into the processes of industrial production and the urban-industrial life world—or, vice versa, to confirm the relevant “achievements in integration” of that bourgeois society then in the process of formation. Even nowadays this formula is still utilized in a rather unreflective manner, despite all earlier and present-day critical objections to that “interpretive concept” of the “bourgeoisifying worker.”23 But the tenacious obstinacy of this concept is no argument for its correctness—especially when it is not a matter of the cultural change of life-styles as a whole (a realm in which supposed tendencies toward embourgeoisement still need to be researched more carefully), but the narrower domain of work-oriented identity and value systems. In their capacity to determine meaning and function, the bourgeois norms of disciplined work and social behavior embody something quite different from that complex of collective guiding values of the producers which evolved organically from work experience. The one set of norms developed from the context of new economic interests in utilitarian exploitation and social-political programs for creating order and discipline; the other set was generated from the context of historical forms of reproduction and strategies for fulfilling needs. But one would be more justified in pointing to the roots of a native work discipline among producers in

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another sphere, namely, the “homegrown” lines of tradition flowing into folk and popular culture and reaching far back into the preindustrial agrarian and artisan economy. Those lines transmitted collective values of experience and strategies for survival which were partially transposed into the new relations of production: rules of familial production and reproduction, models of communal utilization of resources, and work codes and social codes specific to occupation groups and gender. As we know, those codes already possessed considerable normative and selfdisciplining power.24 Orderly, precise, and rational (however that is conceived) behavior on the job as a criterion for the qualification of labor is certainly not a bourgeois discovery. It may almost be superfluous to recall at this point (referring to Thompson’s already classic studies) those principles of a “moral economy” which, as a guiding system oriented in terms of experience and need, helped steer the reproductive behavior of preindustrial lower strata “from the inside.”25 Such patterns of orientation are clearly still operative in the behavior of the early generations of factory workers. Their presence is identifiable in behavior on the job, in attitudes toward rules regulating time and wages, in conflict behavior, and in the organization of familial forms of dwelling and provision of household services.26 The fact that such forms of behavior have to date been documented largely for nonurban milieus of industrialization does not prove that this was only a “rural” phenomenon. Rather, that would appear to be the consequence of an overly narrow concept of “workers’ culture” which tends to exclude certain historical traditions and cultural variants from critical scrutiny.27 After all, even the relatively few early autobiographies of male and female workers clearly reflect this retrospective orientation to “preindustrial” experiential values and “nonindustrial” models of behavior.28 The evolving proletarian work code evidently linked up with such traditions; it then gradually formulated new standards for securing the material basis for living and standards for social reproductive behavior more generally.29 Significantly, in contrast with earlier models, of course, this “proletarian work ethos” no longer viewed itself primarily as a groupinternal system of values. Rather, it actively and demonstratively confronted the prevailing set of guiding values for the society as a whole. Using the argument of the existence of one’s own, more-or-less voluntary system of work discipline, a message was broadcast to the rest of society, namely, that the workers were already proving their worth through labor, and that now the burden of social-moral proof rested in the other court, with the system. It had an obligation to guarantee materially adequate possibilities for reproduction and socially “just” living conditions for the producers. Based in large part on this understanding of a historical social contract,

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for example, we can account for phraseology found even in the early petitions by workers and workers’ memoranda in the period of the Vormärz (1815–48) and during the 1848 revolution: they often begin with the phrase “the working class, which has always fulfilled its social obligations. . . .” Such concepts of “justice,” rooted in a historically formed consciousness among the producers, remain a mainspring of selfawareness, indignation, protest—of the workers’ “movement”—in later stages of working-class history as well. Barrington Moore, in his classic study on “injustice,” has provided an initial sketch of the basic features of that historical line of development.30 I also believe this was a central coordinate within the value system of manual workers, whose importance for the social self-positioning of groups of producers and their options for political action deserves to be fleshed out in far greater detail. How can the continuity of this reference system impinge on the present, at least as a possibility? In recent years, there has been a lively and broadly based discussion in the Federal Republic on the need for a social reduction in work hours in the form of a thirty-five-hour week. This debate has also revolved around such historically evolved, social-moral standards in producer consciousness as the following: Is it legitimate to demand to work less and yet to receive the same pay as before? Doesn’t it tend to undermine the moral feeling of self-esteem among workers: the consciousness that they, in any case, have always kept up “their part” of the contractual bargain and only demanded “fitting and proper” remuneration for their labors—a fair wage, decent working conditions, and treatment with respect? In trade-union discussions, it was evident that older workers in particular had certain problems when it came to this question about legitimacy. They were thinking much less about the economic and political options open for achieving this demand—and more about its compatibility with their own traditionally shaped social-moral sentiments. Is this a lingering residue of that old work ethos as a counterpart, so to speak, of that seemingly no less antiquated notion of a “fair wage”? How else can we explain such social-moral standards except on the basis of a historically formed set of values and as the expression of a culturally shaped group or class identity?

Individual Habitualization A second complex is directly connected with the question of “identity via work”: the biographical conversion of this value-orientation and its individual habitualization. What would be the consequence if this workoriented self-image could not be maintained subjectively, if it proved nu-

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gatory as a concept of social identity due to the individual loss of the ability to work as a result of illness, old age, or simply unemployment? This would clearly constitute a threat to one’s material basis for survival, and would also entail a substantial loss in social status and social role competence. We know from historical-empirical studies and autobiographical testimonies that even the customary loss of income due to age (a result of declining physical ability) was experienced as a wrenching crisis in proletarian biography. For a long time, such a decline in the curve of lifetime income roughly after one’s fortieth birthday was considered to be an experiential value31 for many manual occupations, and naturally made itself painfully felt in the household budget and standard of living. A worker’s style of living and consumer behavior had to be scaled down to a restricted principle of basic material survival toward the outside world as well, accompanied by a far-reaching abandonment of many previous forms of social contact and “demonstrative expenditures” (G. Bataille), such as participation in collective forms of social intercourse and festive celebration. But the associated social-psychological effects were far more grievous: the loss of social recognition and confirmation within the web of familial, neighborhood, and coworker relations constituting the life world. This creeping experience of socioeconomic deprivation was lived through like a slow form of “social death”—especially within the reference group of one’s fellow workers, with their various types of job-related interaction and status games, ranging from physical contests of strength to inviting one’s colleagues for a drink. The reason was not because the existing social network was not prepared to support attitudes of solidarity and to take special consideration of one’s plight. Rather, it derived from the fact that one’s self-image had been shattered at a crucial point—an individual was no longer able to see himself reflected in the customary fashion in the mirror of previous ties and relations with the social environment. In this way, the remaining objective options for shaping one’s biographical role were felt to be in ever more pronounced conflict with subjective needs for shaping one’s life. Over and beyond the individual horizon of experience, this problem of waning physical strength and ability as a worker was undoubtedly bound up with a basic element of class experience: the threat of unemployment and loss of wages as the “class fate” of one’s father, neighbor, or fellow worker—both transmitted in group-biographical terms and experienced autobiographically. This remained an ever present threat to one’s own “individual plan for life” as well.32 In working-class autobiographies of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, these worries are clearly reflected in a conspicuously keen percep-

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tion and stressing of one’s own (and others’) “labor power,” physical constitution, and capacity to work. It functions almost like a literarystylistic form of narrative structuring: virtually every person who enters for the first time upon the stage of some scene recalled in memory is initially described in totally external terms, a description focused on attributes of physical prowess and capacity to perform labor. Only after that is he or she characterized in respect to social attributes and modes of behavior. Thus, in memoirs written down around the turn of the century, Moritz Bromme first sketches most of his fellow workers in terms such as “big and brawny,” a “powerful, big-boned man,” “nobody could work like he did,” “very gaunt and lean.”33 And he immediately weaves these “physical images” into complex descriptions of situations in which such aspects of physicality play a key role: at work, during visits to the pub, and especially in connection with the often coarse joking and playful roughhousing common among fellow workers. Big or small, powerful or weak, young or old—these are not merely secondary attributes in the description of a person, but indicate the individual possibilities and limits of social role formation within the concrete context of each scene. Physical behavior—related to both technical work processes and social group configurations—emerges as a decisive factor shaping the symbolic language of “workers’ culture.” In the case of ritual work customs and the games of honor played by journeymen artisans and groups of single workers, it has been long recognized that important fields of learning and models of habitualization from preindustrial popular culture are embodied in this symbolic practice.34 “Culture” is learned as a game and in games. In the meantime, many cultural processes of transformation have been identified in whose course such popular patterns enter the sphere of both proletarian leisure culture and the domain of industrial culture more generally. Despite mechanization and the ubiquitous presence of machines, there are still numerous “old forms of work”—even among worker generations in the phase of advanced industrialization, who have long since been socialized in “industrial” terms.35 Nonetheless, this dimension of working-class culture is often still dismissed as an “anecdotal” sphere of everyday working life by “serious” mainstream historiography of the working class. It is evident that certain historians still overlook the central importance of these interaction configurations of joking around, making lewd remarks, and horseplay as a special cultural mode utilized to mold social relations in the specific form of “proletarian solidarity on the job.” This permanent symbolic dialogue between persons and groups is also a part of that “spectrum of possible cultural modes of expression that can be found in the everyday life of working people in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries”36—as is the activity of production itself, or the forms in which political conflict is

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dealt with and waged. Nor are those modes of expression valid only within historical working-class life. Upon closer scrutiny, such horseplay can even be shown to be a quite active formative element in everyday factory life. In jocular rough play of this type, certain production activities and the corresponding technicaleconomic constraints on behavior are directly confronted with “subjective” social and cultural behavioral needs. Naturally, the latter point in the opposite direction: toward rest and relaxation, recreation, conversation, and contact. Thus, play as a limited disruption of the controlled industrial organization of humans and machines is, in the final analysis, nothing but the attempt to give symbolic expression to the perceived contrasts between the regimentation of production and the willful Eigensinn of the producers. On the other hand, it is also an attempt to coordinate these contrasts anew in order to find fresh syntheses. Such independence and Eigen-Sinn is thus always multilayered; first, play signals a situational “dropping out” of productional regimentation and the hectic pace of labor. Secondly, it signifies a kind of test of the physical and social ability to act both for oneself and vis-à-vis the group, namely, the comparison of physical powers and prowess with one’s fellow workers and a ritual confirmation of group membership. Third, it is social self-assurance: the fact that others play along signalizes the presence of bonds, emotional closeness, solidarity—and the shared reality of an “everyday round of living together and ‘sweating together’ in the factory.”37 All this lies within the framework of a concept of social self-assurance whose central media of communication are the experience of physicality and body language. Through them, one can combine the sense of shared convictions within the group of coworkers with the repeatedly tested experience of having control over the machine, being able to cope with the work process, and seemingly even being able to regulate that process in certain stages individually. And this sense of being able to control work processes does not simply mean just the regular performance of what is necessary in the particular course of production—it also involves a genuine “playing” or “toying” with its technical-organizational rules, including the risk of mistakes and accidents. Tracing the lines of such “male tests of courage,” one could write a virtual separate “history of mentality” of physical labor. Due to the lack of research and source materials, we actually know very little about that history except for its most recent chapters. Since the appearance of accident insurance and reports on accidents at work, we can now see the tip of the iceberg. Even the newspapers have begun to report about its “most modern” and spectacular forms, such as the game of “Russian roulette” in large factory halls, in which a worker places his head or arm in a gigantic automatic press in order to win a bet—along with the symbolic reward of the admiration of his

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colleagues. Or the feat of a long-distance truck driver who successfully compensates the reduction in effort and risk afforded by a modern power-steering mechanism by showing how an entire tractor-trailer can be playfully steered by using only a single finger. Most probably, creative imagination in past eras in this respect was equally inventive. In this complex and always ambivalent sense, “work culture” must be conceptualized as the habitualization of certain physical and symbolic modes of behavior—not just as the learning and routinization of movements, postures, and rhythms of motion that result directly from the work process, or in the sense of “rational” group cooperation in conformity with the rules. Nor would that be in keeping with the self-image of the “skillful” workman. Rather, it also encompasses diverse forms of a symbolic “staging” of the self, manifest in demonstrations of physical strength, playful control of the machine, and competence in dealing with one’s fellow workers and situations.38 In the meanwhile, a quite different function has been added: mockery, playfulness, roughhousing as forms of dealing seriously with competition and conflict in the group. Individual tensions between fellow workers and status struggles between different groups of workers are also expressed in terms of such symbolic behavior—communicating dislikes, animosities, and social differences to outsiders. Such tensions are underscored, for example, when the calibration of the machine of an unpopular colleague is upset; or when veteran workers look on quietly while “green” novices endanger themselves, unaware of the risks involved in machine work; or when skilled workers demonstratively exaggerate the “fine differences” separating them from the unskilled by refusing to engage in certain physical activities and assigning them to the unskilled rank and file. Workers’ memoirs often recall such practices: “the arrogance among the workers,” so strong “that they didn’t show us guys anything at all,”39 the ambition of the “skilled” worker, where you “even [have to] understand from the way he looks that he’s ‘something better.’”40 Thus, these symbolic forms of group praxis certainly reflect more than just basic proletarian solidarity.41 Social contradictions have also been extended here into group cultures. Even nowadays, when the importance of such complex models of occupational culture may have declined as a whole, one can still observe manifestations of this on the shop floor. For the most part, they are still part of the specific forms of expression of a historically evolved “male” industrial culture.42 The latter always tried to define and defend the factory as a “man’s world”—for both economic and cultural motives. This should be a further reason for paying greater attention to this open field of research, especially since questions regarding the internal structuring of age-specific and gender-specific patterns in workers’ culture and its

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transformations must also affect our understanding of contemporary everyday culture. Did models of “body language” exist which female and male workers, the single and the married, young and old used to articulate differences between themselves—and yet at the same time through which they were able to communicate? And does this cultural grammar still have an impact in contemporary variants of work and industrial culture? Answers to these questions can be found only by exploring a specific research terrain: that “small field” of the history of everyday life—by engaging in detailed analysis and the “thick description” of concrete situations, contexts, figurations, experiences.

Body Experience and Body Language Extending the angle of vision, a third line can be explored: “proletarian” experience of the body and body language as elements of a class habitus manifested likewise in political terms. Commenting some years ago on the “social use of the body,” observations that have received far too little attention to date, the French sociologist of culture Luc Boltanski tried to work out class-specific rules on “physical modes of behavior” and “somatic culture” in its historical coherence.43 Taking cues from Pierre Bourdieu’s conceptions of “class habitus” and the “class-specific body,” Boltanski developed an entire series of paradigmatic observation fields in which one can trace the contours of the “physical habitus” as a culture modeled in stratum-specific terms, a striking “dimension of a class habitus.”44 This habitus is reflected in the history of eating habits, the realm of work, sports, and sexuality. The “physical habitus” of workers’ culture must be investigated as a distinctive shaping feature of “workers’ politics.” “Workers’ politics” is distinguished culturally in this manner from the political praxis of other strata and classes, presenting itself as a separate political symbolic system. Preindustrial and early industrial protest is nothing other than an “appearance” (Auftreten),* in the literal sense of the word, of lower-class groups on the public stage, a physical form of expression of collective views and attitudes. Just as the tests of strength, the small scuffles and friendly horseplay, the gestures of defiance constitute part of the cultural grammar of everyday life in the milieu, on the street, at the factory, the corresponding collective articulation of displeasure and social criticism in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries represents a prototype of a “political body language” of the lower strata of society: expressed in bread riots, in boycott actions, in violence (often more alluded to symbolically * A play on the double meaning of Auftreten: to “appear,” make a “stage appearance,” or to “stand up against something” and “speak out.”—TRANS.

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than actually practiced) against symbols of state authority or local organs of law and order, in actions of public reprimand and charivari.45 For the most part, this involves established, ritualized patterns of protest, clearly aimed at a specific goal, namely, to spark a kind of social dialogue. On the one hand, they articulate a specific social self-image of the group, by formulating in public their own demands and using their own linguistic and symbolic forms for the purpose. These patterns express group ethos and group affiliation, which can maintain their validity as “moral everyday institutions” (Bourdieu) only by this demonstrative insistence on the form and style of protest behavior. On the other hand, this group action naturally is directed at the social environment, and simultaneously contains the social issue, threat, and message in the cultural form of organization of the protest. What may appear externally and to the present-day observer as a harmless and unpolitical aspect of such actions, rooted more in traditional custom, often functioned as a symbolic intensification of their claim to legitimacy in the actual historical situation, thus enhancing political effectiveness. Beyond the appeal to social norms and conceptions of law and justice against whose violation the protest was directed, the hooking up with a specific “tradition of form” was frequently able to mobilize that added modicum of justificational power that the figure of ritual and custom (part of cultural history) itself contains. Thus, disguised to a certain extent as custom, and bearing its weight of continuity and tradition, protest skillfully created additional latitude and space to move in, a kind of quasi-legality in the borderland between condoned popular game and prohibited political action. Protest took on a dimension of “masquerade,” so to speak—in the form of charivari, journeymen processions, an at times almost carnival-like appearance on the street by men and women; charivari was naive and “coarse” often precisely where it touched on special social sensibilities. And it formulated its social critique far more in terms of the kinesic mode of gesture and body language than via the medium of the spoken word. In this preindustrial and early industrial protest scene, the social formations and cultural patterns of the various groups of producers emerge in a complex that is still closely jumbled and intermingled: the “folk,” depending on social perspective, appears as a kind of amorphous mass or a unified coalitionlike formula for resistance. Exactly where popular, plebian, or even proletarian lines of tradition may lie—say in the 1830s and 1840s, when artisan journeymen protest alongside market women, day laborers next to factory workers—is more a theoretical question.46 The decisive factor is that the various lower-class groups make use of a cultural pattern of protest and resistance that is shared in its basic features.

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This tradition, this “language of protest,” is also connected to an early chapter in the history of working-class politics. Even after the intensified processes of social segregation that accompanied early industrialization and followed upon the emergence of the organized labor movement, a good deal of this tradition continued in practice, modified in form and function, yet unmistakably related to that shared tradition of “bodily politics.” There are at least two good reasons why this deserves scholarly scrutiny today. First of all, even the later form of protest—the full-blown demonstration in the “modern” workers’ movement—represents an expressive form of collective attitudes and convictions that makes primary use of the language of symbol and the body. A demonstration is attitude and stance, body language and gesture; it is constituted and defines itself as mass kinesic movement—in the sense of the individual bodily behavior of numerous individuals as well as the collective bodily formation of the many. The linguistic usage common in the labor movement also expresses this physical collective self-image symbolically—in concepts such as “mass body,” “mass march,” or the “power of the proletariat.”47 One need but recall the “tableaux vivants” and the parades of sportsmen at the earlier workers’ celebrations,48 or the political-metaphoric and emblematic character of the banners and May Day placards, with their representations of workers brandishing hammers and waving flags49—these indeed are vivid testimony to the long historical strands of a tradition of “politics from below” modeling itself in bodily imagery and almost staged as a kind of theater. Needless to say, that is a tradition which remains largely unwritten. Secondly, the historical sources, especially down to the end of the nineteenth century, sometimes tell us very little about the actual content, demands, and arguments that were protested and demonstrated for or against. Official reports and newspaper articles are generally a questionable source when it comes to the subjective convictions and motives for action animating the lower classes. Significantly, many external features of behavior, on the other hand, were often described in far more detailed terms by bourgeois or police observers, and later on were even photographed: the faces, raised fists, bodies, and gestures—in short, the “language of the street.” That “language” seemed threatening and was, for that reason, registered and recorded by the authorities with greater exactitude (or anxiety) than the issues themselves. If these are indeed genuine symbolic forms of expression of nonbourgeois politics, then we also should view those clues and traces that have been preserved as the signature of the inner moods and attitudes of the historical subjects, and take them more seriously as legitimate sources. In methodological terms, this is another argument for investigating the “little traditions,” for a microhistory in the field of working-class politics.

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Not in order to divert attention from the major lines of political life to nonpolitical everyday life, but rather in order to be able to explain political action from its specific social and cultural everyday matrix. Even when solidarity in a demonstration or at an election meeting first emerges in the form of a significant, “grand-scale” political gesture, it evidently succeeds only because it is rooted in “little” everyday gestures— the tradition of arms linked or placed over the shoulder, physical touch, glances, and body movement that is mutually reassuring. These are universal forms of kinesic language and structures found in all spheres of proletarian life, linking those spheres as loci of experience. And these symbolic forms occasionally contain more political potency than various other models generally conceived to be the true expression of political activity: balloting, organizational bylaws, and elections, whose behaviorstructuring rules in actual fact generate more passive discipline than active action. So if we are truly in search of the democratic rules of “political culture” in our history, it is high time—after the rediscovery of a popular culture of resistance and an organized culture of the workers’ movement—to illuminate the still rather shadowy realm of symbolic political styles. Nowhere are everyday history and political history more closely interwoven.

On the “longue durée” of Workers’ Culture These have been reflections on subfields in everyday history in which I believe it is possible to make significant headway in trying to understand the cultural praxis of the great masses of people, their worldviews and what they value. If one delves into workers’ culture in search of such reference systems and patterns of action, it is evident that the answers are not contained in simple historical or social-structural formulas. Social yardsticks and cultural patterns are never the sole and exclusive property of a single historical formation or social group. Beneath this level of temporally bound and socially structured systems of the culture of the lower strata, one can discern certain specific basic principles—extending beyond groups and even beyond strata—underlying the reappropriation of social reality and the organization of experience. Visible in these principles are the outlines of that longue durée of culture. To this extent, the “structural variants of group or class habitus”50 unfold not only in a simultaneous side-by-side juxtaposition of subcultures, but also in a historical sequence, in diachronic processes of the transmission and transformation of culture. However, such continuities and transformations in working-class culture should not simply be traced back to some “dim and distant” popular or plebian past. Research on workers’ culture also requires perspectives

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focused on the present and future, exploring their impact and consequences in “modern mass culture.” Such reflection should not be fixated on the survival of external forms and phenomena, but must also search for those inner symbolic orders that can form cultural “hinges,” so to speak, articulating between historical and contemporary experience. There is no doubt today that the time of a relatively unified culture of the workers’ movement—highly structured in political-ideological and aesthetic terms, such as existed in the Wilhelminian period and the interwar period—is finished. Similarly, general material conditions and forms of everyday life have changed. And nowadays there is also little felt need for the formation of new social camps and “red myths.” But if Raymond Williams’s now classic formulation of the “alternative ideas about the nature of social relations” as the main feature of proletarian identity is correct—that is, not simply a cognitive mirroring of material class situations, but indeed alternative conceptions—then I suspect that recent predictions about the “end of the proletariat” and “proletarian character” (Proletarität) are perhaps a bit premature. In any event, one cannot get very far substantiating the supposed existence—or demise—of class consciousness and class habitus using only election analyses, statistics on income, or social-structural models as the basis.51 Looking at current orientational patterns of working-class families in the area of sociability and group life, language styles and body experience, the distance from petit bourgeois or middle-class standards of behavior does not appear much less than it was in the “golden” proletarian era of the 1920s. The forms of cultural praxis have changed as a whole, but key long-standing “fine distinctions” are still unmistakably operative. Have the class-related historical principles of experience in fact simply dissolved into an ensemble of class-neutral subcultures? Can our everyday culture now be probed meaningfully only in terms of differences specific to gender, age bracket, and occupational group? Is there really a trend toward pure, social “leisure cultures”?52 I believe skepticism is warranted when it comes to such theses of leveling or dissolution. In any case, the question of class culture should not simply be relegated into the historical background and its present-day relevance dismissed. The abiding factor which had a lasting formative impact on workingclass existence was the empirically based and collectively formed awareness of the basic insecurity of one’s own economic situation—that is, that unending chain of experience: of crises, unemployment, and the struggle to maintain one’s material and social ability to reproduce. This basic experience, stored in the memory of generations, confirmed and strengthened by each new threat, was decisive in shaping the culture and mode of life via familial and collective strategies of reproduction. The historical models are well known: in Germany, for example, the widespread

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worker-peasant production family that engaged in small-scale farming as a subsistence hedge, a means of economic insurance; the commuting workers, who for similar motives (and probably because of strong ties to their sociocultural native milieu) were not prepared for “full” industrial mobility;53 finally, the various attempts to find an “individual” way out via commercial life as a small trader or participation in the “collective” solution within the trade unions and workers’ parties. As different and even contrary as these vocational paths were in historical terms, they shared a common strategic motive: to ward off that “collective fate” of unemployment and subsequent social deprivation. Even what in retrospect is often viewed as social mobility—advancing into skilled occupations or, in rare enough instances, making the jump to commercial independence as a small tradesman—remained basically a defensive behavioral model; at best, it was able to reduce the feelings of existential insecurity, but only gradually. Though this principle of experience has been “historically” shaped, its logic persists. Little impressed by the promises of modern “social safety nets,” large groups of wage-dependent producers still feel a basic sense of existential insecurity—that assumption remains the expression of a common shared consciousness of their situation. Their collective background of experience integrates this perception as a component of their identity as workers. It also has a correspondingly negative influence on their expectations, because it privileges that historical “result of collective stocktaking,” handed down in memories within the family and among fellow workers, placing it above one’s own immediate experience. The possibility of losing one’s job, occupational downgrading as a threat to one’s existence, productive lifework, and social identity more generally—these remain a central experiential component in the “collective memory,” even for generations of workers who have never known unemployment themselves.54 This touches on a second complex of experience already sketched above as part of the historical self-image of workers: their identity in terms of their “productive” (i.e., manual, physically active) capacity for labor. This definition remains relevant today, and anything but a closed historical chapter. The class-specific awareness that social recognition within one’s own group and in the broader society can be attained only by competence, dexterity, and performance on the job may even be more deeply anchored in social consciousness than is apparent in the reality of the sphere of production. Recent work in industrial sociology, which does not provide a onesided survey of symptoms of social leveling but rather tries to probe the perception of sociocultural difference and distance, confirms the astonishing contingency of this design for social order and positioning. It has been found that although on the level of abstract social patterns of inter-

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pretation, certain “forms of ‘indifference’ vis-à-vis work function/occupation seem to be on the increase, and the identification with work/factory/industrial world of work is correspondingly declining, these elements of interpreting one’s own life-situation . . . are not a viable factor in the everyday process of work.”55 To phrase it differently: if the selfimage and one’s external image projected back from fellow workers or superiors are to be congruent and function to confirm one’s identity, that can be achieved only by active, adroit, and cooperative behavior at work. This is still “physical, bodily identity” in the sense of value patterns pertaining to labor and performance—despite all the technological and organizational changes in production which have supposedly blurred the distinctions between manual and mental labor.56 Even on the general level of “cultural styles,” this class-specific property of one’s capacity for labor can still be readily recognized, transmitted via the social semiotic function of clothing styles and patterns of taste, language styles and forms of interaction, which combine into the signalment “worker.” This signalment remains bound up in social space with traditional barriers and disadvantages. Both adult and teenage workers, male and female, see their ambitious plans and desires for advancement shattered, often dashed at an early stage against the rocks of social and cultural preliminary hurdles such as written applications, personal interviews, continuing education courses, and the mazeways of officialdom. It is simply due to their “proletarian habitus” that in the eyes of those who “distribute opportunity,” the social “gatekeepers,” they are automatically assigned certain jobs and occupations while others are denied them. What is decisive here is not only individual qualifications; now as before, one’s social positioning in the system of occupational and class features is also crucial. For large social groups, this still means referring back to “physical labor” and “work ethos” as essential and attainable features of identity. Finally, there is a further element: the problem of education and training. One characteristic of the situation is that while qualified vocational training for children is taken very seriously in working-class families, the idea of what constitutes education remains restricted to the narrow conception of a skilled worker or technician. It should be training for “practical professions,” staying as close as possible to “productive,” physical labor. The paths that lead away from this into academic training or supplementary adult education are thought to be important, at least in abstract terms. But when it comes to translating this into concrete educational plans for one’s own children and their future, these schemes often seem like a useless waste of time and money. And this is not because working-class parents are generally hostile to education. An experiential principle is evidently still operative here: such strategies for securing a livelihood or social advancement are viewed as barely functional in the case of working-class children; a “social career” is seldom gained by

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traveling such a path. On the contrary: frequently the upshot is that a substantial portion of biographical and social identity is lost in the process. This supposition is also substantiated by a kind of collective stocktaking of experience. Over and beyond the rupture in familial ties and social bonds, such decisions generally result in a profound “alienation” from one’s own organically evolved patterns of value and need. They lead to the inevitable casting aside of collective, solidarity-based orientations; the loss of an image of society in which social inequality can be interpreted not as an expression of individual failure, but rather as a systematic consequence of social disadvantage; abandonment of the possibility of protecting oneself against unreasonable social demands—in the workplace, in the sphere of sociability, or on the level of social-ethical standards. The attempt to find a substitute for such values in the bourgeois milieu rarely succeeds, because it becomes very evident to what extent social culture is still structured and sharply divided along class-specific lines in that milieu—and not just in public locales like concert halls, museums, or libraries, but in far more everyday and prosaic domains, such as businesses, bars, offices, and sport clubs as well. Similar to the situation in the sphere of production, the field in these realms of social and cultural reproduction is split into sectors each with their own “symbolic orders”— structures that must remain largely alien to these social interlopers. The work of French cultural sociologists corroborates this close correspondence between culture and class structure, substantiated by empirical findings from contemporary French society. Unintentionally, those studies even confirm a great deal else, due to the fact that within their system of cultural categories, “proletarian class habitus” figures only as a sociocultural deficiency, a pattern without its own intrinsic value.57 Yet what holds for history is also valid when it comes to the present: scholarship must exert itself, laboring to discover numerous social principles and orders that have long underlay human experience of everyday social realities, then as now.

Notes 1. N. Elias, “Zum Begriff des Alltags,” in Kölner Zeitschrift für Soziologie und Sozialpsychologie, Sonderheft 20 (Opladen, 1978), 28. 2. C. Geertz, Dichte Beschreibung: Beiträge zum Verstehen kultureller Systeme (Frankfurt am Main, 1983), 265; originally published as The Interpretation of Cultures: Selected Essays (New York, 1973). 3. J. Kocka, Sozialgeschichte. Begriff, Entwicklung, Probleme (Göttingen, 1986), 75.

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4. J. Kocka, “Klassen und Kultur? Durchbrüche und Sackgassen in der Arbeitergeschichte,” Merkur 10 (1982): 957. 5. J. Kocka, “Hitler soll nicht durch Stalin und Pol Pot verdrängt werden. Über Versuche deutscher Historiker, die Ungeheuerlichkeit von NS-Verbrechen zu relativieren,” in “Historikerstreit”. Die Dokumentation der Kontroverse um die Einzigartigkeit der nationalsozialistischen Judenvernichtung (Munich, 1987), 137. 6. For a now somewhat dated but still useful overview of the field, see M. Scharfe, “Towards a Cultural History: Notes on Contemporary Volkskunde (Folklore) in German-speaking Countries,” Social History 4 (1979): 333–43. 7. M. Broszat, “Plädoyer für Alltagsgeschichte,” Merkur 10 (1982): 1245. 8. Cf. for example P. Blickle, ed., Aufruhr und Empörung? Studien zum bäuerlichen Widerstand im Alten Reich (Munich, 1980); Blickle, Deutsche Untertanen. Ein Widerspruch (Munich, 1981); W. Schulze, Bäuerlicher Widerstand und feudale Herrschaft in der frühen Neuzeit (Stuttgart, 1980); W. Kaschuba, “Aufbruch in die Moderne—Bruch der Tradition? Volkskultur und Staatsdisziplin in Württemberg in der napoleonischen Ära,” in Kaschuba, Volkskultur zwischen feudaler und bürgerlicher Gesellschaft (Frankfurt am Main, 1987), 73–122; H. Fenske, “Politischer und sozialer Protest in Süddeutschland nach 1830,” in Demokratische und soziale Protestbewegungen in Mitteleuropa 1815–1848/49, ed. H. Reinalter (Frankfurt am Main, 1986), 143–201; W. Siemann, “Soziale Protestbewegungen in der deutschen Revolution von 1848/49,” ibid., 305–26; K. Obermann, Flugblätter der Revolution. Eine Flugblattsammlung zur Geschichte der Revolution von 1848/49 in Deutschland (Berlin [GDR], 1970). 9. See, for example, A. Suter, “Troublen” im Fürstbistum Basel (1726–1740). Eine Fallstudie zum bäuerlichen Widerstand im 18. Jahrhundert (Göttingen, 1985). Numerous references on this can also be found in J. Kuczynski, Geschichte des Alltags des deutschen Volkes, vols. 1–2 (Berlin [GDR], 1980f.). 10. N. Schindler, “Spuren in die Geschichte der ‘anderen’ Zivilisation,” in Volkskultur. Zur Wiederentdeckung des vergessenen Alltags, ed. R. van Dülmen and N. Schindler (Frankfurt am Main, 1984), 54. 11. Cf. Schindler, “Spuren in die Geschichte,” and W. Kaschuba, “Mythos oder Eigen-Sinn? ‘Volkskultur’ zwischen Volkskunde und Sozialgeschichte,” in Volkskultur in der Moderne. Probleme und Perspektiven empirischer Kulturforschung, ed. U. Jeggle et al. (Reinbek, 1986), 469–507. 12. H. Medick, “Plebejische Kultur, plebejische Öffentlichkeit, plebejische Ökonomie. Über Verhaltensweisen Besitzarmer und Besitzloser in der Übergangsphase zum Kapitalismus,” in Klassen und Kultur, ed. R. Berdahl et al. (Frankfurt am Main, 1982), 164. 13. Cf. the still far too neglected study by K. M. Bogdal, Schaurige Bilder. Die Arbeiter im Blick des Bürgers (Frankfurt am Main, 1978). 14. E. P. Thompson, “Volkskunde, Anthropologie und Sozialgeschichte,” in Thompson, Plebejische Kultur und moralische Ökonomie (Frankfurt am Main, Berlin, and Vienna, 1980), 315. 15. M. Sahlins, Historical Metaphors and Mythical Realities: Structure in the Early History of the Sandwich Island Kingdoms (Ann Arbor, 1981), 7. 16. D. Peukert, “Arbeiteralltag—Mode oder Methode?” in Arbeiteralltag in

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Stadt und Land, ed. H. Haumann (Berlin, 1982), 23. Cf. also A. Lüdtke, introduction to the present volume. 17. See the Glossary for the terms “habitus” and Eigensinn. 18. One representative example among many: M. Vovelle, Die französische Revolution. Soziale Bewegung und Umbruch der Mentalitäten (Frankfurt am Main, 1982). 19. W. Bonß, “Kritische Theorie als empirische Wissenschaft,” Soziale Welt 34 (1983), 76. 20. Interesting material is also contained in the later survey of workers from the year 1912 by A. Levenstein, Die Arbeiterfrage (Munich, 1912); see also O. Scholz, Arbeiterselbstbild und Arbeiterfremdbild zur Zeit der industriellen Revolution (Berlin, 1980), which concentrates mainly on an evaluation of workers’ autobiographical materials from the period 1840–70. 21. A selection can be found in J. Kuczynski, Bürgerliche und halbfeudale Literatur aus den Jahren 1840 bis 1847 zur Lage der Arbeiter (Berlin [GDR], 1960); C. Jantke and D. Hilger, Die Eigentumslosen. Der deutsche Pauperismus und die Emanzipationskrise in Darstellungen und Deutungen der zeitgenössischen Literatur (Freiburg and Munich, 1965). 22. H. Bausinger, “Verbürgerlichung—Folgen eines Interpretaments,” in Kultureller Wandel im 19. Jahrhundert, ed. G. Wiegelmann (Göttingen, 1973), 24– 49. 23. An already “classic” statement on this is T. Geiger, “Zur Kritik der Verbürgerlichung,” Die Arbeit 8 (1931): 534–53. On the entire debate and discussion about embourgeoisement, see esp. B. Mahnkopf, Verbürgerlichung. Die Legende vom Ende des Proletariats (Frankfurt am Main, 1985). 24. Cf. W. Kaschuba and C. Lipp, Dörfliches Überleben. Zur Geschichte materieller und sozialer Reproduktion ländlicher Gesellschaft im 19. und frühen 20. Jahrhundert (Tübingen, 1982); on the preindustrial-artisan life world, see A. Grießinger, Das symbolische Kapital der Ehre. Streikbewegungen und kollektives Bewußtsein der deutschen Handwerksgesellen im 18. Jahrhundert (Frankfurt am Main, Berlin, and Vienna, 1981). 25. See E. P. Thompson, “The Moral Economy of the English Crowd in the Eighteenth Century,” Past and Present, no. 50 (1971): 76–136. 26. An older but still unsurpassed study is R. Braun, Sozialer und kultureller Wandel in einem ländlichen Industriegebiet (Zürcher Oberland) unter der Einwirkung des Maschinen- und Fabrikwesens im 19. und 20. Jahrhundert (Erlenbach-Zürich, 1965); see also the essays by P. Caspard, D. Puls, and D. A. Reid in Wahrnehmungsformen und Protestverhalten. Studien zur Lage der Unterschichten im 19. Jahrhundert, ed. D. Puls et al. (Frankfurt am Main, 1979). 27. Corresponding data for early industrial groups of workers can be found, for example, in W. Kaschuba, “Vom Klassenkampf zum sozialen Protest. Zur Erfahrungs- und Konfliktdisposition von Gesellen-Arbeitern in den Vormärz-und Revolutionsjahren,” in Handwerker in der Industrialisierung, ed. U. Engelhardt (Stuttgart, 1984), 381–406. 28. See, for example, W. Emmerich, ed., Proletarische Lebensläufe. Autobiographische Dokumente zur Entstehung der Zweiten Kultur in Deutschland, vol. 1 (Reinbek, 1974).

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29. This is especially emphasized by A. Dawley and P. Faler, “Working-class Culture and Politics in the Industrial Revolution: Sources of Loyalism and Rebellion,” Journal of Social History 9 (1975–76): 466–80. 30. B. Moore, Injustice: The Social Bases of Obedience and Revolt (White Plains, 1978). 31. In any case, it would have to be feared in this phase of life as a historically shaped “negative expectation.” On this question, see especially the serially based studies on life-income statistics among groups of industrial workers by H. Schomerus, Die Arbeiter der Maschinenfabrik Eßlingen (Stuttgart, 1977); H. Schäfer, “Arbeitsverdienst im Lebenszyklus. Zur Einkommensmobilität von Arbeitern,” Archiv für Sozialgeschichte 21 (1981): 237–67. 32. K. Maase, “Bemerkungen zur Untersuchung kultureller Aspekte im Alltag der Lohnarbeiter,” in Materialistische Kulturtheorie und Alltagskultur, ed. F. W. Haug (Berlin, 1980), 140. 33. M.T.W. Bromme, Lebensgeschichte eines modernen Fabrikarbeiters (Düsseldorf and Cologne, 1971 [1905]), 207 and passim. 34. See, for example, the essays in R. van Dülmen, ed., Kultur der einfachen Leute. Bayerisches Volksleben vom 16. bis zum 19. Jahrhundert (Munich, 1983). 35. Cf. M. Rébérioux, “Arbeiterbewußtsein und Arbeiterkultur in Frankreich zwischen den beiden Weltkriegen,” in Arbeiterkulturen zwischen Alltag und Politik, ed. F. Boll (Vienna, Munich, and Zürich, 1986), 17–28. 36. D. Mühlberg, “Zum Stand kulturgeschichtlicher Proletariatsforschung in der DDR,” in Boll, ed., Arbeiterkulturen, 82. 37. A. Lüdtke, “ ‘Deutsche Qualitätsarbeit,’ ‘Spielereien’ am Arbeitsplatz und ‘Fliehen’ aus der Fabrik: Industrielle Arbeitsprozesse und Arbeiterverhalten in den 1920er Jahren—Aspekte eines offenen Forschungsfeldes,” in Boll, ed., Arbeiterkulturen, 171; see also Lüdtke, “Cash, Coffee-Breaks, Horseplay: Eigensinn and Politics among Factory Workers in Germany circa 1900,” in Confrontation, Class Consciousness and the Labor Process, ed. M. Hanagan and C. Stephenson (New York, 1986), 65–95, and Lüdtke, “What Happened to the ‘Fiery Red Glow’?” in the present volume, especially the section titled “Profiles of Cooperation and Eigensinn.” 38. See also the studies by Rébérioux, “Arbeiterbewußtsein und Arbeiterkultur.” 39. Bromme, Lebensgeschichte, 109. 40. A. Scharrer, “Auch eine Jugend,” in Emmerich, ed., Proletarische Lebensläufe, 320. 41. This aspect is also treated in detail, along with numerous examples, in Lüdtke, “ ‘Deutsche Qualitätsarbeit.’ ” 42. For a case study combining historical and contemporary perspectives, see N. Gérôme, “Das Sankt-Eligius-Fest in den Schmieden der Renault-Betriebe von Billancourt. Industrielle Kultur und Klassenkämpfe,” in Boll, ed., Arbeiterkulturen, 143–54. 43. L. Boltanski, “Die soziale Verwendung des Körpers,” in Zur Geschichte des Körpers, ed. D. Kamper and V. Rittner (Munich and Vienna, 1976) 138–77. 44. Ibid., 161, 143. 45. For an overview of this historical spectrum, see H. Reinalter, ed., De-

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mokratische und soziale Protestbewegungen in Mitteleuropa 1815–1848/49 (Frankfurt am Main, 1986). 46. For a more detailed discussion with empirical evidence, see W. Kaschuba, “Protest und Gewalt—Körpersprache und Gruppenrituale von Arbeitern im Vormärz und 1848,” in Transformationen der Arbeiterkultur, ed. P. Assion (Marburg, 1986), 30–48. 47. See B. J. Warneken, ed., Als die Deutschen demonstrieren lernten. Das Kulturmuster “Friedliche Straßendemonstration” im preußischen Wahlrechtskampf 1908–1910 (Tübingen, 1986). 48. See, for example, G. Korff, “Rote Fahne und geballte Faust—Zur Symbolik der Arbeiterbewegung in der Weimarer Republik,” in Assion, ed., Transformationen, 86–107. 49. See, for example, E. Hobsbawm, “Sexe, vêtements et politique,” Actes de la Recherche en Sciences Sociales 23 (1978). 50. P. Bourdieu, Entwurf einer Theorie der Praxis auf der ethnologischen Grundlage der kabylischen Gesellschaft (Frankfurt am Main, 1979), 189. 51. Even otherwise quite differentiated investigations sometimes tend today to reach such hasty “cultural” conclusions; see, for example, J. Mooser, Arbeiterleben in Deutschland 1900–1970 (Frankfurt am Main, 1984), esp. 224ff. 52. See, for example, H. Schelsky, Auf der Suche nach der Wirklichkeit (Munich, 1979). For corresponding positions in ethnography, cf. I.-M. Greverus, “Kultur,” in Kulturpolitisches Wörterbuch BRD/DDR im Vergleich, ed. W. R. Langenbucher et al. (Stuttgart, 1983), 344–47. A clearly opposed point of view, especially in respect to the connection between youth cultures and class cultures, can be found in the (youth) cultural analyses of the Birmingham Centre for Contemporary Cultural Studies. For an introduction to the broader theoretical framework of CCCS approaches, see S. Hall, “Cultural Studies and the Centre: Some Problematics and Problems,” in Culture, Media, Language, ed. S. Hall et al. (London, 1980), 15–47. 53. Kaschuba and Lipp, Dörfliches Überleben. 54. Cf. Mahnkopf, Verbürgerlichung, esp. 31ff. 55. D. Brock and H.-R. Vetter, Alltägliche Arbeiterexistenz (Frankfurt am Main and New York, 1982), 459. 56. See H. Kern and M. Schumann, Das Ende der Arbeitsteilung. Rationalisierung in der industriellen Produktion (Munich, 1986). 57. P. Bourdieu, Distinction: A Social Critique of the Judgement of Taste (London, 1985; originally published as La Distinction: Critique Social du Jugement [Paris, 1979].

7 WHAT HAPPENED TO THE “FIERY RED GLOW”? W O R K E R S’ E X P E R I E N C E S A N D GERMAN FASCISM Alf Lüdtke

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URING the afternoon and evening of January 30, 1933, tens of thousands of persons poured out into the streets and squares in scores of working-class neighborhoods. They were indignant, appalled at the seizure of power by Hitler and the Nazis; in many towns across Germany, demonstration processions were organized, but these gatherings were quickly dispersed wherever they formed. Several local protest actions and strikes were staged, but had no echo beyond their immediate locality.1 In stark contrast with the analyses—or rather the hopes—of many who had been active in one of the leftist workers’ movements, there was no uprising of the proletarian, antifascist masses. In the years prior to this, Social Democrats and Communists, Marxists and Socialists alike had been firmly convinced that the “proletarian masses” would prove themselves to be a bastion of resistance against any reactionary turn of events. Beyond all the bitter struggles over goals and politics, there was one point on the left where the differing perspectives converged: the “masses” would stand steadfast against any attempt by the “right” to seize power. Even more: many functionaries, sympathizers, and rank-and-file members of the working-class organizations were certain that the revolutionary movement had only been temporarily halted. What the Social Democratic editor Georg Schwarz had formulated in 1931 as the coda to his book on the coal-mining region of the Ruhr Basin would, they believed, soon come to pass: That slogan of socialization of the factories chosen back in those November days [1918—A. L.], a slogan which thousands of proletarians risked their lives for, can never be forgotten. Every day they go to the plant or descend

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into the pits. Every day they haul up coal or empty slag from the blast furnaces. The din of industry drums constantly in their ears, wearing down their bodies. Day after day the flames shoot up from the Bessemer converters into the murky, smoke-filled air. . . . And every day, the proletarian heart burns with a sense of deprivation and injustice. . . . Until that hour when the fiery red glow will finally erupt. It will overflow like an irresistible river of lava, melting down the profit economy, with all its hunger and subjugation, into a better world. . . . That day . . . will come!2

It has often been lamented: that day never came. Instead, it was the Nazis who celebrated their days (of victory), in the early months of 1933 and in the years that followed. Despite the brutal terror that tormented, frightened, or paralyzed thousands in many towns and villages, the absence of open protest beyond the local level, of mass and continued resistance activity against Nazi rule does not mean that the power of the party and the state—and they alone—held sway. And the relative stability of Nazi domination was not only based on material “bribery” or propagandistic seduction of “the many.” Nazi practices to implement and maintain their domination transformed the political field of forces. But the Nazi leadership or state bureaucrats were not the sole actors within this “field,” neither during the first several weeks after taking power nor in later phases. The outlines of actual or presumed counterforces were discerned in the course of efforts to suppress, control, or lure the “masses”—at least in the dark silhouette sketched by police distrust. As repression mounted, the Nazi regime trained its sights primarily, though not exclusively, on the masses of workers: the “mood” of the industrial workers in the large metropolitan centers, as well as any stirring within the “Marxist movements,” for example, took top priority in Gestapo reports.3 The fears of the Gestapo may have been unfounded, or perhaps were also designed to emphasize their own indispensability; in any event, those apprehensions had a considerable impact then—and on later historical analysis as well. Indeed, skepticism remains all the more advisable: after all, wasn’t a kind of consent—or at least an attitude of wait-and-see complaisance (Hinnehmen)—widespread among the workers, whom the Nazis viewed only as potential opponents, but who in the eyes of antifascists represented a natural-born reservoir for resistance? On March 21, 1933, in the dense compression of a symbolic moment, the young Social Democratic Reichstag deputy Wilhelm Hoegner discerned something of that admixture of acceptance and affirmation, a sentiment that could be found even beyond the working-class neighborhoods of north Berlin. On this “Potsdam Day”—that is, the day of that (in)famous handshake between Hitler and Reich President von Hindenburg, intended symbolically

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and correspondingly exploited—he vividly recalled the street scene: “All the houses were decked out with swastika flags. . . . Workers’ wives . . . were engaged in loud conversation, expressing their appreciation for the ‘führer.’ ”4 What then was it that moved and motivated people—especially the workers, who were both courted and rebuked? Why was it that even older workers—not just the young and unemployed—enlisted in the SA? And why, in 1933, did the overwhelming majority of “veteran” industrial workers choose to keep their silence? Workers in massive numbers went along with the new regime—not only in its early embryonic weeks, but also (and even more so) when it came later on to Nazi policies of rearmament and war—many even joined in the jubilation. It is thus important to inquire: how did the fascists establish domination?

“Ecstatic Enthusiasm,” Oppression, “a Certain Appreciation” On the evening of January 30, the Nazi leadership celebrated its victory over what it had denounced as the parliamentary “system” of the Weimar Republic. Joseph Goebbels, Gauleiter of Berlin and also the new minister for “Popular Enlightenment and Propaganda,” organized a huge torchlight procession. The SA and party members, along with many many others, filed past the “aging Reich president and the young chancellor,” as the minister for propaganda, with exaggerated pathos, later described the symbolism in his diary published in 1934.5 The jubilant demonstration lasted for hours; the following day, Goebbels noted: “a million people on the march.” In the published version, that number was translated into the ritual of triumphal processions: “civilians” had paid their homage to the authorities, old and new, “men, women, fathers, who . . . lifted up their children toward the window of the führer.” And these parading masses were not restricted just to Berlin. A radio broadcast sent martial strains, the sound of stamping feet, and shouts of “Sieg Heil!” reverberating across all of Germany. In the following weeks and months, the Nazis staged further manifestations of the supposedly newfound national unity and internal reconciliation in rapid-fire succession throughout the length and breadth of the land. “Potsdam Day,” the official opening of the Reichstag in the Garrison Church in Potsdam on March 21, was followed on April 20 by the celebration of “Hitler’s birthday.”6 And on its heels, ten days later, May 1, 1933, in particular was engineered as a state “Holiday of National Labor”—with the greatest possible mass participation.7 The scenic preparations were a visible demonstration of the regime’s claim to revolution-

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ary change. But titles and rites of state power were also utilized. The state, as the representative embodiment of collective association under law, beyond all divergent and conflicting interests, was meant to certify the legitimacy of the “new order.” The mustering of “popular masses” had been one of the preferred instruments of the Nazi movement even before 1933. Such methods made it possible to mobilize presence and allegiance in a special way beyond the dividing lines of class and station; in particular, it facilitated the physical and demonstrative appropriation of the public sphere, its takeover on the traditional turf of the opposition.8 Goebbels, in consistent fashion, channeled the demonstrations in celebration of the Nazi victory into a climactic march on May Day 1933: the triumphal procession of the “national Socialists” on the established day of struggle of the red International. Having planned a “mass event” such as “the world has never seen,” the chief organizer looked out upon a “gigantic sea of people” and a “wild ecstatic enthusiasm” surging on the Tempelhof grounds in Berlin. The message was unmistakable: “An entire people is on the move. . . . Workers and burghers, high and low . . . now the differences have been wiped away—only one German people on the march.”9 This was not only an incredible exaggeration, but singularly cynical to boot, because the jubilation had been meant to drown out the shrill screams. It was tacitly presupposed that opponents would be excluded and liquidated—which is to say, the policy of making “short work” of opponents that the new rulers were ruthlessly pushing ahead with on all levels. The staging of “May Day 1933” was, in that regard, also the spectacular counterpoint note in a chain of brutal terror unleashed by the SA and SS over many weeks against various kinds of “Marxists,” non-Nazis, or anti-Nazis. At the same time, this May Day was orchestrated as the macabre prelude to the final occupation of the trade-union buildings and the prohibition the following day of all free trade unions.10 From the perspective of the Nazi leadership, there seemed to be every reason to use both the carrot and the stick, especially vis-à-vis the workers. Despite all its lightning success, numerous reports reaching the Nazi command centers in the spring of 1933 could be pieced together into a disquieting montage: a picture of emphatic rejection prevalent in circles of the working class. It is true that the leadership of the General German Federation of Trade Unions (ADGB), in the run-up to May Day celebrations, had expressly welcomed the shift from the socialist “day of struggle and sacrifice” to the Nazi “holiday.”11 At the same time, however, the picture of habitual wrangling between the Socialist Party (SPD) and the Communist Party (KPD) no longer seemed to hold. From the side of both the KPD and the top echelons of the SPD, clear signals had been given that the workers’ parties were not willing to simply cave in and submit.12

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In particular, in the elections for factory committees held in March and April of 1933, the ADGB candidates of the Social Democrat–oriented “free” unions had won a crushing 91 percent of the votes.13 The “Red Trade-Union Opposition” (RGO), which was anti-ADGB, but equally antifascist,14 had garnered 5 percent of the poll, while the “National Socialist Organization of Factory Cells” (NSBO) had managed to gain only a paltry 2.5 percent. On the other hand, such election results harbored the potential of suggesting a false picture of the situation to the leaders of the “left,” especially when they held them up as proof of a unified anti-Nazi front within the industrial “proletariat.” Thus, for example, significant exceptions in the election results for shop-floor committees pointed to the presence of substantial “nests” of Nazi support: in some of the Krupp plants, proNazi votes had amounted to more than 50 percent of the total; in the Ruhr mining and chemical industries, they accounted for some 30 percent.15 These were evidently cast not just by unskilled or semiskilled workers; there were also votes for Nazi candidates from the ranks of skilled workers, the family men who made up the core of the Social Democratic organizations. Thus, the elections for their shop-floor representatives were ample indication that there was certainly no homogeneous front of opposition to the fascist takeover of state power among industrial workers in the plants and workshops.16 It was not only workers associated with the “nationalist” organizations who viewed the Nazi movement—and even more so, the Nazi seizure of power—in a positive light, or even welcomed its coming. The ranks of those who openly supported the changes (or had nothing “against” them) also included an appreciable number of workers who had previously been active in Communist organizations, or were connected with the Social Democratic movement.17 A Nazi functionary saw them as the “quicksand of the workers’ movement.”18 However, such formulations only expressed an attitude of disdainful arrogance “from above.” They overlooked the actual motives of workers who felt they had reasons neither to reject the Nazi movement and regime nor just to tolerate it in a stance of complaisance. In the newly founded organizations, particularly the German Labor Front (DAF), numerous workers sensed new options for their own survival or advancement. Others even felt that the Nazi movement and regime provided the proper expression of their heartfelt political and social desires. Prior to the takeover of power, the Nazi movement was able to prove attractive to industrial workers because their “anticapitalist longings” (Gregor Strasser) appeared to be given a concrete answer in the practice of local Nazi “factory cells,” especially starting in 1932. The guideline of

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the Nazi leadership stipulating that the NSBO should woo workers away from the “Marxist” organizations had a virtually unavoidable secondary spin-off effect in everyday factory life, that is, in competition with the trade unions: in several regions and branches, the NSBO began to develop its own initiatives for representating workers’ interests. In some state factories, especially in the Ruhr mining district as well as in Berlin and Saxony, the NSBO came to bear a striking resemblance to a “nationalist” trade union.19 After the takeover, the policies and engineered public image of fascism found favor not only among those workers who either had been completely cowed or were already active Nazis or sympathizers—its reach extended further. The “depth of penetration” of the Nazi regime and its early stagings is reflected even in the sharply negative reactions of opponents and others directly affected. The functionary Franz Vogt, a state legislator active in the Social Democratic “Old Association” (AV) of miners, commented derisively in the official paper of his organization in February 1933 that Hitler’s processional marches and triumphal entries resembled the “coronation of an Indian maharaja.”20 Of course, in the dream factories of the movie industry, Indian pomp had for years been the symbol of living in sumptuous style, a life of immeasurable wealth; it stood not only for waste, but a veritable paradise on earth. Nazi rule did not turn out to be a short-lived incident lasting just a few weeks. Some opponents, as well as opportunistic supporters, may well have consoled themselves with the hope of its early demise during the first few months. However, in the spring of 1934, articles by Social Democratic correspondents (reports of the illegal SOPADE) clearly confirmed that the new Nazi regime—or some of its leading lights—had found a quite widespread positive echo among (industrial) workers. Though the “picture [was] very mixed,” the impression was that the Nazi regime “continued” to “extract a certain degree of respect” among roughly a third of the workers. From Berlin, a report noted that the Nazis “now as before . . . had won over . . . large segments of the workers,” and “in particular, faith in Hitler is still surprisingly strong.”21 By the end of 1937 and the beginning of 1938, it had become virtually impossible to find any remaining traces of such a “faith.”22 Especially in the wake of wage controls, wage cuts and freezes, as well as a hike in work hours and intensified demands on the work force, a “mood” had now taken hold in the factories, characterized by SOPADE editors in September 1937 as a “general discontent among the workers.” Nonetheless, the editors saw no cause for optimism: “all reports agree that the workers are passive.” Nor did the author of a dispatch from the Rhineland: “The great mass [of workers] are indifferent, complaisantly tolerate everything

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and are concerned only with personal matters. They take part in factory meetings and presentations, often out of curiosity, and contribute to collections. . . .”23 “Faith, apathy, curiosity”—what was it that was moving people, motivating their action? Both regime opponents and the Nazi security apparatus, in bizarre parallelism, shared a common misunderstanding: they harbored hopes—or suspicions—that “basically,” workers were carriers of the virus of refusal, if not indeed the germ of revolt. This makes it all the more imperative for inquiry into the points of linkage between Nazi policy and self-representation, on the one hand, and workers’ experience and orientations, on the other. What were the concrete forms and issues that served to favor (or perhaps suggest) the possibility of reducing the distance between them, or even of coming to an agreement?24 Nonetheless, this polarized formulation—that is, either rejection25 or agreement—is too one-dimensional in its approach. After all, don’t the observations of SOPADE reporters to the effect that the “workers” were politically “indifferent” point to orientations among them that were positioned beyond the arena of organized politics, so to speak, or anterior to it? The puzzled irritation of the correspondents, a constant feature after 1934, reflects the presence of mass forms of accommodation. In silhouette, one can discern the contours of a widespread behavior: practices of complaisance. My thesis, however, is that these were not simply an expression of apathy. No matter how much the varied and diverse forms of such toleration facilitated a “continuation” on the part of the Nazi rulers, complaisance in this sense does not signify an apolitical stance. On the “interior side,” I would suggest, the dominant element was a sense of detachment: a self-distancing, fueled by independent needs, interests, and practices of one’s own making. What then were the experiences of life (and survival) in the factory, tenement house, or “company settlement” in which these needs were grounded?

Celebrations of “May Day” and Worker Orientations May Day 1933 was the culmination of many things. Let us limit ourselves to proletarian milieus and modes of life. To the sensibilities of active Social Democrats and Communists alike, the Nazi official state holiday was especially offensive, because all they had been able to achieve in previous years was state toleration of this proletarian day of struggle. The nationwide celebration of May Day as an official national holiday had remained a onetime affair (1919); only in Saxony and a few small states had it been possible to maintain the annual celebration of the holiday on an official basis. As unbelievable as it may seem that the formerly scornful amongst

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the ranks of the holiday’s beneficiaries now likewise wished to praise the “dignity of labor,” many of these workers were indeed present at festivities on May 1, 1933. And the arrangements were in many cases more spectacular and “dignified” than in past commemorations of the workers’ day of struggle.26 However, even in preceding years, differences had developed in how May Day was perceived and evaluated. Experiences specific to age group or generation “tinged” the class interests.27 This day reminded the older members of the socialist movement of the legacy of persecution and sacrifice for “the common cause.” For younger workers, especially in the SPD, the hall meetings, with their predictable program (speeches, performances, and group singing) were little more than dull and boring manifestations, replete with pathos—a symbol of a hidebound party bureaucracy that had little remaining agility. However, the expressive “militant demonstrations” of the KPD remained attractive only to a minority after the defeat of the Arbeiterbataillone (“workers’ battalions” see the Glossary) in 1919–20 and 1921. In both camps, a positive counterimage that did remain was the frequent get-together afterward, the closing round of social fun and merriment “among comrades” (both male and female).28 Yet May Day had also functioned as a sectarian arena, one where the hardening of differences between the two political camps, SPD and KPD, had become readily apparent. After 1926–27, there were hardly any more joint festivities.29 Interparty disagreements that may, for many, have appeared restricted to newspaper campaigns or rare public celebrations (such as May Day) were dramatically heightened by the events of what soon came to be called “bloody May”: the “police war” of state power against (illegal) KPD demonstrations in the Berlin districts of Wedding and Neukölln on May 1–3, 1929. Provocative violence and uncontrolled use of weapons on the part of the police—initially directed against small groups of demonstrating women and men, and then passersby as well— took a toll of thirty-three dead and hundreds of injured.30 Over and beyond all spectacular actions, the tensions and disputes between the SPD and KPD were underpinned by a massive social basis. The older, married, skilled, or veteran workers felt more at home with Social Democracy and its movement of working-class culture. Younger and single workers, those unskilled or unemployed—a number of whom also felt excluded and disdained by their “established” class comrades—were attracted to the KPD.31 In both cases, these were largely male fraternities meeting outside the home. Nonetheless, at least two-thirds of all wage laborers (and the percentage was far higher among female workers) either kept their distance completely from party, trade-union, or association life à la SPD and KPD, or sufficed with a “short sniff” of the political air circulating there. A good

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many of them probably felt that the organizations of “abstract intellectual socialism” (Wissenssozialismus—E. Lucas) had little in common with the concerns that animated them, namely, “how to cope with love and separation . . . with children . . . disease . . . old age and death.”32 Moreover, in some areas, such as the Ruhr, from a third to half of the (male) workers sensed a strong affinity with the church organizations. Perhaps the emotional style of religious services held an attraction for them, in both the pastorally led Roman Catholic workers’ associations as well as the Christian trade unions.33 Of course, these were not invariant factors. A worsening of conditions and an accelerated pace at work had largely shaken the foundations of customary orientations and loyalities, especially in the years 1918–20, and in the subsequent period down to 1923. In the mass strikes of 1919– 20, demands for “socialization” were in the main a code word for more justice and autonomy on the job (especially among the Ruhr miners); in part, one of their major concerns had been the abolishment of piecework wages.34 For those whose were in their late thirties or older in 1933, the movements after 1918–19 had signified a double shift. This is reflected in a swing pattern among the membership: a mass flocking to the ranks of the “free” or socialist and Christian trade unions in 1919–20, followed by just as massive an avalanche of resignations from the unions beginning in 1923.35 In particular, there had been renewed propagation of notions setting aside traditional class lines. After the “social truce” (proclaimed during World War I), the Free Unions had joined together with management and the authorities in 1923 to form part of the “national movement” to combat occupation of the Ruhr by French and Belgian troops.36 The ADGB leadership noted with alarm that at least in Upper Silesia and Bavaria, National Socialist influences had also made inroads among the workers.37 Did the struggle against “French imperialism” show that class struggles were possibly spurred more by authoritarian-chauvinistic aims and sentiments than by proletarian-internationalist ones? But organizing in parties and trade unions, strikes, and mass actions were not the whole picture. The great masses of workers were oriented especially toward “multilayered” objectives.38 The decisive factors at play were not just clear-cut “exact” calculations, focused on the here and now, or on (seemingly) distinct concepts about the future. Interests were also interlarded with a variety of memories and experiences. That admixture may also have contained residues from a number of “momentary shocks,” ranging from the mass strike movements of 1919–20 to largescale lockouts (Daimler, 1920) or the struggle in the Ruhr iron mills (December 1928), as well as hunger and epidemics after 1917, and again after 1929. So securing personal survival ranked for many far higher on

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the priority scale than the respective correct (party) line. This meant various things, including grappling with constant anxiety about one’s material existence on the roller coaster of an economy oscillating from upswing to downturn, and achieving some sort of a balance between the augmented array of consumer products in a commercial “mass culture”;39 especially for younger workers, there was the burden of oppressive dependence on extremely low wages. And for all, there was the task of learning how to assert oneself and one’s personal interests against the often heavy hand of expanding social bureaucracies in the towns and (large) factories. In almost all instances, “political” options remained restricted to the sphere of formal politics; thus, they did not stand in the way of possible mutual assistance and emergency help, for example, between families who had voted for either the KPD or the bourgeois-Catholic Zentrum party. These forms of mutual aid and support prevented many an accident at work, and made it possible for numerous orphaned children to survive. Yet in daily intercourse, sharp boundaries were drawn between kinfolk, on the one hand, and those who were “only” neighbors: friendly chatting was permissible on the front stoop, for example, but not inside the house!40 Marking out the boundaries of what constituted upright conduct and propriety between one’s family and fellow workers and neighbors regulated the safety nets for daily survival. Of course, in the spheres of social intercourse, and even more so in connection with familial bonds and marriage, the “milieus” of religious affiliation were the dominant force.41

Symbolic Offerings: “Subduing” (Bändigung) of the Workers? Life situations and memories, one’s own needs and those of others—all this cannot be separated from the symbols in which they are both perceived and encoded. Fellow workers (or neighbors) could “make sense” of symbolically formulated experiences, that is, greetings and emblems, menus and clothing, forms of address and speaking, melodies and song texts. But symbols were limited only in part to specific groups or classes. Some referred to experiences that other generations, strata, and classes also shared, or were able to comprehend and appreciate in their way. The symbol “bread” illustrates this “multilayered” dimension. In the 1920s, and even more so from 1930 on, it frequently featured as an emphatic symbol in political rhetoric and propaganda. Loaves of bread depicted on election posters, demands for “work and bread,” awakened

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(and exploited) bitter memories of hunger and distress going back to the period 1915–16 to 1919–20, and for some down to 1923, especially among urban workers of the generation born before 1908–10. They commented on this directly: “lard à la Hindenburg for the week, gray combat bread mixed with wood shavings, marmalade of dubious origin, and boiled turnips as the main meal.”42 Savoring the aftertaste, many must have understood the wish for social and political conditions that would prevent renewed misery and “chaos” as a result of a lack of bread. The metaphor of “bread” tapped numerous perspectives. For one thing, it signified the eating of bread, that is, the daily (or festive) taste, especially sensations of pleasure and satisfaction. “Bread” was associated with the bread that everyone expected or hoped for as a daily means of survival, but also as part of a longer-term secure situation. “Given” forms of perception and expression were utilized; of course, they were not only adopted, but were adapted and changed—that is, appropriated and made one’s own. When working-class men and women, housewives, and teenagers, especially in the years 1916–18 (or 1920), gave vent in demands for “bread” to their indignation about the duress and oppression suffered or shouted for “bread” during waves of layoffs, then they were making use of socially “familiar” symbols, while at the same time defining them in new ways. “Bread” recalled the “daily bread” of the Lord’s Prayer, an allusion to (Christian) faith and the church. Yet there was also a dimension here of the state in the role of “father”—the pater familias had to assure there would be bread, and distribute it to “his children.” The reference, implied and understood, was to the family and childhood, that is, the family circle, and to the fond memory of an occasional special treat, like a piece of cake from mother as a child. The symbol shaped memories and experiences. In the baking and eating of “bread,” that is, its preparation and consumption, the symbol took on palpable concrete reality. Symbols, in this view that leans on ideas elaborated by Victor Turner,43 are conceptualized as harboring an enormous potential for stimulation. Action is propelled forward by symbols, and they can also act as a brake in the individual case. It is important to bear in mind that symbols do not just “designate . . . something for others.” Symbols refer simultaneously to two planes: cognitive meanings and emotive-sensory qualities. For example, they actualize images of social variety and statecontrolled unity. But above all else, symbols link such ideas with individual feelings of liking and pleasure (or disgust). In so doing, they often make “powerful” phenomena and “grand” conceptions come alive. Symbolic practice is not limited to speeches and written texts. Processions utilize visual signs, offering scope for the symbolism of body move-

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ments and forms, which they simultaneously develop. Processions do more than just organize the sensory quality and “power” of symbols: participants are both audience and actors at one and the same time, and can “(re)appropriate” the symbolism concretely, via the senses. Experiences and interests, fears and desires, fantasies and plans are condensed within “powerful” movements and actions in the public arena.44 In the fascination of the moment, all concerns about “tomorrow” are suspended, and thus any consideration about others must be forgotten. At the same time, symbols step beyond the margin of their staging: the meanings of red (of the flag) reflect blood and fire as forces of nature. Yet the color red also points to the fact that symbols not only create or confirm understanding at a level that transcends social class distinctions; they also highlight conflicts between and within classes. Red, in the eyes of some, is the color symbolizing (state) authority and power, especially royal and anointed—for others, it remains the color of revolutionary (counter)force.45 Symbolic interpretations and their “depth of penetration” into the life praxis of the masses were consciously exploited by the Nazi leadership. In the arena of public politics, May Day 1933 was the staged massed proclamation of the claim by Nazi leaders that they were (in their way) the heirs to the legacy of the workers’ movement—and thus the creators of the new “folk community.” The goal was to overcome social differences dividing the nation—that was Hitler’s message in his nationally broadcast speech. All arrogance of any distinction between manual and mental labor was declared defunct, a thing of the past. Associated with this was the promise of palpable success—of a fair wage for “industriousness and labor” and (even more tangible), the promise of “bread,” food, and sustenance. In his speech, Hitler thus brought to bear the broad symbolic scope of bread: everyone “dreams” about a “state that can once again secure to our people its daily bread here on earth.” At the very beginning of his address, Hitler spoke (tersely, but apparently the message was clear) about “horrible sufferings” associating this with the “political crisis.” Now, he said, both were “past history for the German people.”46 Hitler used “strong language,” employing communicative formulas that were equally class specific and that transcended class distinctions. The nonverbal staged presentation, especially on Tempelhof field in Berlin, was in keeping with this all-encompassing approach: the physical arrangement of the participants and structuring of sense impressions, from the procession of the tens of thousands, with its endless sea of marchers, to the rigorous military discipline they displayed—raised exponentially in the colossal towers of flags and banners and the nocturnal “cathedral of light” beamed skyward from the searchlights.

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This May Day was a symbolic action: by “all” for “all.” Attestation of belief for the faithful coupled with a staged spectacle for skeptics and opponents. Appeals to commonly shared convictions were celebrated, to “ideational images” (Ideenbilder) which could (or in fact did) become fixed points for perceptions and the behavior of the “masses” over and beyond all social divisions and distinctions. Class-conscious proletarians also were able to feel that it spoke to them directly, with an immediacy inviting their participation, and they indeed took part.47 In the procession and the “ordering” of the masses, practices were continued or utilized that had also been components in the “revolutionary discipline” of the socialist and communist movement.48 Mass presentations of “physical culture,” like mass choirs and scenic performances, had been part of an assault by Social Democratic and Communist groups aimed at overcoming the bourgeois concept of culture and its organized practice. The occupation of the street by the SA was likewise always a direct attack on a central locus of the proletarian public sphere and proletarian politics, both in its organized forms and, even more so, in its everyday, informal modes. Many even perceived the red in the Nazi flag to be an element that had been “stolen” from the workers’ movement, as Ernst Bloch observed in a comment tinged with bitterness.49 Symbolic offerings by the Nazi leadership were in keeping with physical compulsion and material lure. The simultaneous employment of these means was not restricted to the early months of German fascism; rather, it was a basic characteristic of fascist rule. Timothy Mason has stressed the importance of this synchronism for the relative stability of the Nazi system: “oppression, neutralization and integration . . . mutually enhanced each other.”50 The presence and myriad activities of the Gestapo (for example, internment in concentration camps or, starting in 1940, in labor rehabilitation camps) were not constantly in evidence on the job or in residential areas. Yet state violence in its most brutal form could never be ruled out, especially given the increasingly augmented measures to exclude so-called Gemeinschaftsfremde (aliens to the community).51 Cooperation by bosses, plant managers, and superiors with the public authorities marked that side of everyday repression in the life of workers that was simultaneously “intensified” and “smoothed out” by state authorities. Neutralization is bound up with the latitude (albeit limited) in wage scales in the various branches that profited after 1936–37 from the armaments boom; the greater scope for wage flexibility led to the development of areas allowing enhanced latitude of movement and action for (male and female) workers.52 Tilla Siegel has expanded the perspective: she describes the “segmentation” within the industrial work force, due to increased wage differentiation, as a highly effective component opera-

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tive in neutralization processes and policies.53 However, that view overlooks the simultaneous movements within the class, that is, on the various rungs of the wage scale: the rapid advancement of semiskilled workers up to the position of foreman remained an affront for skilled personnel—but it was a powerful incentive for the upwardly mobile and other semiskilled workers.54 To this extent, social processes appear at least ambivalent and multifacted: in this case, for example, integrative features are unmistakable. Integration refers to the package of offerings to fulfill the needs for a “good” or better life. For the great mass of industrial workers, the opportunity to move a step closer to that goal via gainful employment and adequate wages remained extremely limited, especially up to 1936, but thereafter as well. Even doctored statistics for wages and prices were unable to conceal the hardships of providing for one’s family and the shortcomings in food provision.55 Yet hopes were nurtured by the promises and benefits of the organization Kraft durch Freude (KdF) as part of Nazi vacation policy,56 and the culturally engineered efforts to conjure up a “folk community”: the annual Reich party conventions in Nuremberg and so-called harvest thanksgiving festivals, the Bring the Saar Back Home into the Reich! campaign of 1935 or the 1938 Anschluß of Austria, as well as the sports extravanganza of the 1936 Olympics. And each year, once again, there was the old mainstay: the Day of National Labor on May 1. Even the war could be usefully exploited, at any event during the phase of the blitzkrieg and military successes that continued down to the summer of 1941. According to Mason, integrational offerings were directed to the “specific need for identification of those who felt deeply insecure and confused.”57 But what exactly were these “needs for identification”? And is the willingness to go along with or utilize such offerings sufficient proof of the existence of such “needs”? And again: what is the significance of the contradictions (to which Mason pays little heed) and the internal distances devoid of tension within the class when ideas about the feared or desired future are involved? Do different “patchworks” (Gemengelagen) composed of partially disparate and even contradictory needs shape the perceptions and action of individuals and groups? There is no quick answer to this question from the perspective of the history of everyday life. Initially, it is necessary to relate “needs” to patterns of behavior and action, because the desires and fears of people were developed—or obstructed— in the context of everyday life and the struggle to survive. This also means that only from the context of mode of life is it possible to ascertain the rationale of an attitude of wait-and-see complaisance vis-à-vis the fascist threat and fascist rule.

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Interim Remarks: The Historical Perspective on Modes of Working-Class Life—“Human Economy” or “Daily Close-Quarters Combat”? Studies on workers’ behavior before and during German fascism tend to concentrate on the late 1920s and the 1930s. At the same time, they are dominated by a short-sighted bipolarity, in which human interests grate against conditions for action. The conditions—that is, impositions from above or stimuli and incentives—have both a political and a socioeconomic side. One example that can serve to illustrate the political dimension was the right to organize and the existing options for parliamentary and judicial control of action by administrative authorities and the police before the Nazi seizure of power—and then terror and authoritarian caprice by state and nonstate ruling bodies after the takeover. On the socioeconomic side, one can note rationalization after 1924, mass unemployment from 1929–30 on, and continuing emergencies until 1936–37, accompanied by a step-up in pressure on the job. This view holds that individuals and groups react to “given and present” conditions. Wage interests are the prime regulators shaping the attitudes and behavior of workers. Though these interests appear to be historically variable, they prevail and “ultimately” determine the frame of reference for individual and social action. At the same time, attention is limited to average wage figures—but these never indicate the true wages received or their actual fluctuations. Moreover, the preferences or dislikes, animosities or solidarities that develop and take hold—or diminish—over the course of a life or generations are downplayed to a secondary role in this perspective. However, the multiple layers and the different rhythms of those “patchworks”—which, in their unwieldiness, are precisely what constitute “modes of life”—necessitate taking both a “broader” and “longer” view. Studies which attempt to grasp the longer-term shaping of patterns of behavior and the changes they undergo fall short of the mark in another way. This can be illustrated by the example of longitudinal investigation. Josef Mooser has posed a whole series of questions in order to throw light on “working-class culture” and “working-class consciousness” in Germany over a period from the turn of the century to the end of the postwar economic boom in the 1960s. He categorizes and analyzes cycles of wages and cost of living, as well as geographical, social, and occupational mobility, matrimonial patterns, and family organization.58 Nonetheless, important strands are missing from this “long view” which could illuminate the “texture” of “modes of life”: along with contemporaneous attempts

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at interpretation by those directly affected, what is especially lacking is the dimension of industrial and factory work itself. Analyses of individual features or the tracing of clusters of indicators over longer periods of time tend to overlook key dimensions: the recurrent “daily close-quarters combat” (G. Schwarz) engaged in by men and women on the job, in the street, and at home. This involves the experiences associated not only with daily practices, with mutual exchange as well as conflict. The attempt to comprehend these complications furnishes insights into that realm of praxis in which interests are constantly (re)appropriated and spelled out from day to day and over the course of a lifetime—in which they are culturally molded and thus become “real.” What is salient here are “medium-term” profiles of experiences and patterns of behavior. These modes of experiencing and interpreting on the part of “the many” also provided a basis for their receptivity toward impositions coming down from those in power, ranging from the reintroduction of the military draft to symbolically condensed reaffirmations of the purported “folk community” on May Day. In the following section, I intend to sketch certain steps that can be taken to explore “patchworks” of situations and experiences in a fruitful way. Emphasis will be on male experiences and behavior; the praxis of female workers and workers’ wives can be touched on only marginally.59 In the center of focus are situations of everyday life in the factory; in addition, public events (such as May Day) will be associated with individual biographies and collective profiles of experience. This leads to the question of how forms of “self-willed” (eigen-sinnig—see the Glossary) behavior regulated the complaisant toleration—and also the active appropriation—of conditions of rule and domination. When it comes to the preconditions for fascism, it is also always a question of the limits and opportunities for action of the historical subjects.

On the Phenomenology of Factory Work: “Manual Dexterity” on the Shop Floor Industrial proletarians were stamped by the “work of their hands.” Their own self-image, and that which nonworkers had of them, were superimposed, one supplementing the other. In the eyes of the bourgeois classes, and those of their class comrades as well, men were muscular; they wielded hammers or shovels (alone or together with others), but also had to operate and maintain various types of driving machines and machine tools. Their profiles of experience and modes of orientation stressed the elements of physique, physicality, and physical strength.60 There was another ingredient in identity based on physical abilities: the skill and adept-

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ness mediated by experience with materials and tools. Corresponding to images of “living labor” (K. Marx), there was the concomitant image field of the often “huge” machines, literally superhuman in dimension, the plant equipment, and production processes. Daily toil also harbored another element of enduring fascination for workers: the challenge to tame and harness the blazing, seething, ominously threatening forces of nature again and again in a concerted effort by man and machine.61 Not only did such orientations determine the self-images of factory workers, skilled and unskilled—this self-image, stressing physical prowess, encouraged or confirmed rigorously hierarchical forms of (self-)organization. At the same time, the “icons” of industrial labor had a salience that transcended class distinctions: workers shared them with (male) members of the petit bourgeoisie and upper class, with office workers, teachers, and intellectuals. What charm these symbolic notions held for the rural agrarian classes living outside the industrial-urban regions, landowners and tillers of the soil, must remain an open question. Factory work is a kind of cipher. It designates an extraordinary multitude of different practices and experiences, while at the same time serving as shorthand notation for these.62 They were all characterized as much by the application of physical and mental energy as by forms of communication or social distance between fellow workers and supervisors. Finally, one always had to be ready for irregularities and breaks in routine, from unexpected production orders with a quick deadline to breakdowns in machinery for days and weeks—and to the restructuring moves or firing of personnel that, beginning again in 1924, increasingly determined everyday factory life in the name of “retrenchment.” Depending on the branch, one was also able to feel directly the almost continual pressure from a sluggish economy, and the depression beginning in 1928–29: an increase in layoffs or no new hiring, and particularly the number of canceled hours and shifts. For the workers, though, or in their concrete specifics, such eventualities were hard to foresee. Work experience is gathered in different types of situations. If you go to the plant grounds and venture a first exploratory glance (over high walls or often through opaque panes of glass), what strikes you initially are the enormous differences. The peculiarities specific to a given branch are obvious: say when you compare heavy physical work in mines or steel plants63 with the manufacture of watches or electric meters, that is, meticulous precision work. Nonetheless, one could expect to find that most industrial sites were noisy, smoky, dusty places, full of oil or pungent odors. Plans for plant layout and equipment as well as medical reports (or complaints from nearby residents) about the infernal “hammering” (of machines) indicate the perennial presence of those impressions bombarding the senses that have “always” colored and channeled the perception of factory workers.

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Work in individual factories and workshops entailed a multitude of movements, small and large, day in, day out. For example, this involved the orderly (as regular as possible) incoming supply and onward shipment of raw materials and semifinished products, such as sheet metal (for pressing or deburring) or wrought iron (for pounding, boring, milling, or shaping with a lathe). Hauling not only involved moving around workpieces or tools: tools also had to be adjusted and calibrated according to the requirements of the specific production order; workpieces had to be lifted and shifted, put in place on the machine and removed. In lathing and milling, it was necessary to provide for constant cooling during machine finishing—this necessitated getting water and oil, pouring it on, and wiping off the residue. Tools and products required constant cleaning. Moreover, shavings and burrs sprayed through the air and could injure workers, this despite the gradual increase in protective screens, plates, and other safety measures. This also meant that squads of sweepers would be on the move—on occasion during the work process—snaking their way between the running machinery. Often several times during a single shift, women brandishing brooms would pass among the rows of woodworkers in furniture factories (and likewise at times in chassis assembly and airplane construction plants). Working days in factories were rhythmically structured by work breaks. But distancing oneself from orders and regulations was not limited to permitted rest breaks—illegal interruptions were at least as important. Meanwhile, since the 1920s (i.e., beginning with the at least partial introduction of the reduced, eight-hour workday), worker interest in short lunch breaks and earlier finishing times had risen considerably. Sandwiches were usually “polished off” at or near one’s machine. Many ate “by themselves,” so that fellow workmates wouldn’t notice what was in the sandwich; after that, a few minutes remained to chat (or catch a proverbial forty winks). Illegal breaks required so-called blind spots that were not constantly under visual surveillance from the foreman’s office. A deafening decibel level, such as had been the unchanged norm for decades in mechanical spinning plants, made conversation virtually impossible when machines were operating. For many, one alternative to escape the din was to daydream. Another was to knock off for a “toilet break” or a short trip to the hot water (or coffee) dispenser. Experiences and orientation modes are shaped and organized within the matrix of concrete work processes and their stages. One defining element is the specific way in which the tool or machine is used. Concepts of industrial sociology from the late 1950s remain “contemporary” and thus relevant even for factories and machinery in the 1920s and 1930s. Key questions must be asked: Was a blank or semifinished product worked or moved “with” (mit) an automatic device or crane? Or were attention and effort concentrated on working “at” (an) a machine tool?64

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If spindle lathes were employed in a mechanized workshop, then rotational speed and filings had to be constantly monitored; thus, the necessity for correct computation of transmission values. Precise calculation and careful monitoring had to be combined into a method of mechanical laissez-faire: “being able to let things run unsupervised.” Only then was it possible to attend to the often varying individual work orders (such as in a repair shop). Over the longer haul, only a highly seasoned, that is, routinized, flexibility on the job could provide a modicum of security that a person would be able to “make his proper wages.” If automatic lathes were in operation, then it was necessary to finish large numbers of single pieces gauged to a similar quality of workmanship, using sample pieces (though this was less and less common a practice), but predominantly employing models. In such cases, the profile of experience for the worker was significantly shifted. That was also the case if one worked with other or newly introduced special machinery (requiring a small range of variation during operation). There was substantial diminution in the scope left to the worker for making a decision, a discretional latitude which certainly was part of the task when moving a workpiece “with” the aid of a crane. However, the distinction positing less stereotypical work “at” machines and more monotonous work “with” machines cannot be applied to all types of jobs or developments. Work “by means of and subdued to” (durch) machines had been a customary practice for decades, for instance in the mechanized spinning plants. Here one isolated worker, mostly a female, operated several machines in a deafening roar. Or another example: automatic lathes, especially when several machines were operated simultaneously, were kept going at proper pace using the “constant rattling melody”65 of the machine as an indicator. Such overlapping multimachine operations were gradually introduced beginning around 1908–10 in the spinning industry, continuing down to the late 1920s, and then in the armaments boom beginning in 1934–36. These perspectives underwent certain modifications, of course, in the case of semiskilled workers. Frequently, such workers were younger, and had migrated from rural areas into the cities and industrial districts, a pattern especially manifest beginning again in 1936 in the wake of the economic upswing and the renewed demand for industrial workers generated by the armaments boom. Even those trained as woodworkers or barbers, for example, who had failed in locating gainful employment, often looked for positions and possibilities to hire on as apprentices in the factories. Many were also from the ranks of workers who had been laid off during the Great Depression. In large plants such as Hanomag/Hannover-Linden, those who had been sacked earlier were again offered jobs once vehicle and tractor construction was resumed in 1934.66 In addition, after 1934–36, depending on branch and factory, opportunities multi-

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plied to apply as a worker for on-the-job, in-house training (mainly in larger firms, such as Henschel in Kassel). The notion that working with automatic machines was a task of unending monotony also needs revision. Despite uniformity during operation, one could always expect interruptions as a result of “disturbances.” Such snags often challenged workers to find a solution by themselves on the spot, or indeed made such makeshift measures an unavoidable necessity. But when machines were “running smoothly,” then you had a chance to let your thoughts “roam” or “shoot the breeze” with workmates—even after 1924–25, when the practice of one worker simultaneously handling three or four machines (overlapping operation) had been introduced as standard operating procedure in many plants. Machines and apparatus rarely stood in isolation. In the numerous branches of the machine construction industry, among others, efforts by management to improve the “work flow” (or introduce such a smoothflowing operation in a given plant) had a key impact on the organization of work, beginning in the mid-1920s. In most plants, the distance between individual machines (and thus room to maneuver and scope for action) was also reduced or eliminated. Proposals for reorganizing factory work had been the object of intense discussion since F. W. Taylor had put forward his notions about the “one best way” for industrial production at the beginning of the century. Such proposals had also been put to practical test on occasion. In German industry, there was a dominant attitude of skepticism toward any rigorous breaking down of the work process into operational steps in the sense of Taylorization. Rather, the interest was to stimulate and then utilize the “German worker’s . . . pleasure in his work.”67 At the same time, changes were introduced in work organization and machinery, as well as accounting systems, first in the years around 1910, then beginning in 1920 and especially after 1924. The general line being followed by management in many plants was sketched in the following terms by the technical director of the machine construction subdivision of the GHH steel combine (GuteHoffnungshütte [GHH]-Maschinenbau) located in Oberhausen in his report on the spring Leipzig Trade Fair in 1934: “Machine tool operation is becoming a more extensive affair, but is being rendered easier by simplification. The basic principle followed is that operation has to be ‘fool proof,’ in line with the American principle, so that even inexperienced hands will not cause a breakdown in the most complicated of machines.”68 Nonetheless, even in “rationalized” plants, there were still workshops or single machines in operation everywhere, irrespective of the size of the factory. For example, the GHH combine had a workshop for railroad wheel sets in its machine construction division. An internal study conducted in the spring of 1934 dealt with the evidently chronic problems of

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profitability.69 One main topic was the “outdated physical plant.” But the presupposition the study proceeded on was that lathes and milling machines, as well as the wheel-disk milling works, would continue operating with the same equipment. Savings were to be made by reducing the maintenance personnel and limiting the practice of “making everything oneself” among the master workmen, especially by introducing (possibly for the first time) an exact monitoring of the time necessary for converting individual machines, and by instituting a system of homogeneous work at individual machines on a given day. An additional recommendation was to determine exactly how much energy was being used—and then reduce the amount. Another example: riveting was partially replaced by welding during the 1930s at docks and in locomotive factories. Here too, though, this change was gradual, and was not introduced at the same time everywhere, even within individual firms. The hydraulic riveting hammers were undoubtedly a health hazard, causing serious, irreversible damage to hearing. Yet riveting was an exceptionally varied activity, not a monotonous job: you had to maintain a high level of exact, even blind cooperation with your “holder,” the caldrons or hull walls worked on always had certain differences—and in particular, it was imperative for the rivets to be absolutely tight. After all, the safety of the caldron or ship’s hull depended on each individual rivet. And welding was also a quite risky business: again and again, some worker would “blow off his fingertips” or “burn his eyes.”70 Electric (single) driving motors had been on the market since the turn of the century. Yet many workshops retained transmission-belt systems, even down into the 1940s. Depending on the sort of drive, one had to worry about the eventuality of specific types of breakdown or accident. There were repeated warnings (also using visual means, such as colored posters) about the danger of getting caught in the moving transmission belt and being badly injured—or even killed. However, that same danger also represented an ever present challenge: only clumsy workers could have an accident by getting too close to the belt during shifting of direction (from forward to reverse gear). Moreover, electric motors were not necessarily safer—they harbored their own dangers or possibilities for unexpected “disruption”: for example, an electrical short could occur at any time. In any event, the conversion from transmission belts to electric driving motors in machine tools (especially during the armaments boom under fascism) was a momentous change for the worker, similar to the transition from a worker’s operation of one machine to many simultaneously, an operational change that had become the rule in many branches or production shops since the 1920s. Accidents and accident prevention measures pointed to the fact that

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dangers were always lurking on the job. At the same time, they signaled a topic that was controversial. Workers (and union functionaries and industrial inspectors even more so) could see that there was a problem with unsafe machinery and inadequate training, and complained about it. But engineers and businessmen (i.e., factory managers), along with insurance lawyers, took a different view of the problem: in repeated cases, all they could discern was “carelessness” on the part of the workers. Directly on the job, of course, survival necessitated a high degree of attentiveness. The defensive responses in interviews with workers about their job memories indicate just how real the risks were. Satisfaction or even pride in having outwitted superiors and the dangers of the machinery were also part of the picture. Evidently, some workers also adopted a strategy of lethargic resignation as a way to deal with dangers and “manage to get by” (or to evade the uncertainties, and perhaps fears, about the next moment or day). Metal shears usually had a built-in safety device necessitating operation using both hands. If a plate threatened to slip out of place, why not call over a workmate to help push it back or even to hold the shears, freeing your hands for other adjustments?71 What the GHH engineer quoted above had emphasized in his 1934 report on the Leipzig Trade Fair generally held true when it came to practices in the factories: the machine tools of the firm GHH-Maschinenbau were so “outmoded” in comparison with the new trends that “the difference in performance between the old machines and new ones can be compensated only by the skill and dexterity of our skilled workers and by increased expenditure of time.”72 The circle closes here on the question of the transition to special machines with little range of variation: the advocates of “rationalization” by division of labor were not primarily concerned with mechanization. What was paramount in their eyes was a reduction in preliminary work steps and final finishing, as well as a stricter regulation of the scope for individual action. The extent to which worker “skill and dexterity” remained necessary at the machines was thus all the more important. Especially in all areas of machine construction, the reading and conversion of blueprints was part of the preliminary work steps. However, in the everyday life of the workshop, a strategy differing from that of breaking down the process of work into separate steps turned out to be in part unavoidable, but perhaps more productive. In February 1919, Krupp initiated manufacture of locomotives and railway cars. One problem the smiths, lathe operators, and others found themselves faced with was that the blueprints presented multipartite and multidimensional representations of entire groups of parts, but did not show the respective details— for them an unaccustomed practice (meaning they lacked the requisite routine!). Since the clients, namely the railway administrations, were not

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prepared to make changes, the only solution was new training.73 Based on their experience in vehicle construction in the Daimler-Untertürkheim plant, proponents of “group fabrication” expressed the “suspicion” that “qualified factory workers” valued drawings as a “symbol of their higher skill level.” For that reason, it was not advisable to have men work only according to prepared models.74 Likewise, the newly founded periodical Werk-Zeitung at Daimler published an article in 1919 by a molder that launched a vehement attack on the so-called system of fuller forms (involving more “opulently” cast pieces that were then shaped down to a proper fit).75 He argued that especially during crises, it was irresponsible to waste material. Yet that could not be avoided in a situation where draftsmen failed to allow for and include the material loss during pouring and further processing, necessitating a procedure in which all the forms had to be laid out “more fully.” The continuing debate was finally concluded by one of the directors, P. Riebensahm. In his view, molders (and correspondingly, other workers as well) would inevitably translate specifications “properly”; “tracing” was impossible, so that they would have to continue to utilize “values based on experience from the machine shops.” However, the final steps of retouching and adjustment were also one of the areas where repeated breaks occurred in the production process. Here, the experienced hands of the workers were indispensable. At the same time, they could create and assure themselves some latitude for their own action as well. Both in the 1920s and even ten or twenty years later, a large degree of manual fitting work remained a necessity in motor or chassis construction and in final mounting. It required a great deal of repeated scrubbing, filing, and polishing, along with repeated tries to check if the part “fit.” This was also true even in the case of manufacturing procedures that were considered especially “modern” in terms of their equipment and standards, such as automobile assembly lines (Daimler in Stuttgart-Untertürkenheim and Sindelfingen, or Opel in Rüsselsheim) or truck and tractor production (Henschel in Kassel, Hanomag in Hannover-Linden). One can characterize the finer distinctions in the experience profiles of the workers by underscoring three points. First of all, the situations that cropped up directly on the job had a wide range of diversity. The demand for disturbance-free operation was in stark contrast with the broad array of interruptions that actually occurred—from a hitch in supply to a short circuit at one’s own workbench, from the various categories of orders (some difficult, others pleasant) to the snags and slowdowns as a result of a shortage of production orders or a canceled shift (or even layoffs). In terms of modalities, work at machines was not identical to work with machines, and especially work by means of machines. At the same time,

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factory work always had great “similarity”—and perhaps you could discuss one or another problem with fellow workers from other plants and branches—problems such as the fact that the orders were always given by superiors, or that as fascinating as the taming of natural forces and the manufacture of consumer items by machines both large and small may have been to the eyes of the outside observer, the daily picture in the factories was another story. That reality was stark: a workaday grind in dark and murky, drafty, overheated or freezing production halls, where the ears were bombarded by a constant cascade of clanging and squeaking accompanied by a flurry of wood and metal shavings. Secondly, the changes in the wake of “rationalization” after the turn of the century and in the 1920s had always involved only single plants and workshops, and even these not always in their entirety. In a survey conducted in 1930 by the German Metal Workers’ Association (DMV, i.e., the free trade union of metal workers), it was reported from some sixteen hundred medium-size and large plants that about 80 percent had still not introduced assembly-line production or even conveyor-belt procedures. And in a third of these plants, there were no new machines.76 So the railroad wheel-set workshop in GHH was not an isolated case. The third point can be touched on only briefly. The experiential arena “factory world” was at the same time limited by those same workshop experiences in which it was grounded. For that reason, the connection between the organization of the workshop and the “style” of control in the workplace, that is, the culture of the workshop and plant, is all the more important.

Market Relations and Work Processes: The Wage System, Workshop Competition, “Pride in the Product” Scrutinized more carefully, the uniformity of factory work proves chimerical. Yet it is not just the dissimilar rhythms of mechanization and organization of work with which experiences combined and altered (and which they in turn reciprocally influenced). The economic fluctuations in individual branches, that is, how many production orders were on hand, overlapped with and impacted on worker orientations. In many instances, moreover, those conjunctural changes were also not in keeping with the more static interests in control characteristic of management. The central field of struggle was the wage system and how wages were determined. From the beginning of the century on, the “system of the masters” (Meisterwirtschaft) had gradually been phased out and replaced. It had

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meant a high degree of autonomy for the “noncommissioned officers of capital” (K. Marx) in recruiting and disciplining workers, especially in connection with the distribution of forms of pay and the determination of pay scales. The practical implementation of this cornerstone of industrial economy was taken over by personnel and work preparation offices, and in part by company accounting divisions as well, bureaucratizing it in the process. The masters retained only the formal instrument of certifying the pay scales; in actual practice, they were largely replaced by “work team” (Kolonne) bosses and/or foremen. Generally, workers at special machines for uniform series, both semiskilled and skilled, were employed on a piece-wage basis. By contrast, wages for repair jobs and other individual work were for the most part paid on an hourly time-wage scale. As different as wage arrangements were, in accordance with the particular style of management in a plant and the culture of the workshop, group piece-wage schemes nonetheless became a more and more common fixture beginning in the 1920s. This form of piecework was already a quite familiar fixture.77 During the “long wave” of expansion of performance-based wage systems starting in the 1890s, briefly interrupted by the mass movements against piecework wages in 1919, this form gradually moved into the foreground. Group piece-wage arrangements guaranteed (and indeed forced) constant competition between fellow workers. Monitoring the others became indispensable. Yet there was no equality in the group or team. Instead, members of the team were classified according to age, seniority, family situation, and specific performance. In formal terms, the classification was made by the master; in actual practice, it was the bailiwick of the foremen. They were the ones who approved or denied increases in the (hourly) pay scale; in particular, they had the job of doing the account for each completed order. In the framework of these calculations regarding total time worked, they reevaluated each individual worker again and again. Most foremen immediately collected a supplementary “cushion” of work hours that were added into the total, but had not actually as yet been performed. In this way, they could compensate over the short term for problems between the different teams or slack periods in the case of individual workers in their own team. This reserve cushion of hours could be tapped in response to pressing demands from offices, masters, or engineers. From time to time, it was also possible to employ it as a means to pressure individual members of the team. The foreman, who generally also worked with the team, often had to distribute all the wages within the team even in the large plants, or had to calculate the individual wages. “Determining the size of the pay envelope” also meant having to justify to coworkers the differences in final calculated wages and the assignment of “cushion” hours. The “team boss

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needed to stick together with his team, otherwise the team wouldn’t really have been able to fulfill its target or minimum.” Occasionally workers would “threaten” the team boss with “a couple of punches.” In the 1920s, plant directors increasingly preferred time units as a criterion for work accomplished and wages to be paid (rather than number of pieces). One upshot was that the whole area of “time and motion studies” became an especially precarious and symbolic field of conflict between “living labor” and superiors.78 The calculation of “times for movements and machines,” “times for secondary tasks,” “waiting periods,” and regulations regarding the “work operation” during a sample time and motion study provided extensive scope for mutual distrust as well as the use of power. Not only workers, but also some senior personnel on the shop floor were especially skeptical when those carrying out the timing were technicians. After all, they just “came down from upstairs” for a brief check. Only on rare occasions did those who were monitored, that is, the workers, demonstrate open opposition and rejection. Instead, forms of “selfwilled” (eigensinnig) behavior predominated. Often such manifestations were individual and concealed (or unspectacular) efforts just to gain a better position: egoism and opportunism as one’s charted path. The spectrum ranged from attempts to “negotiate” individually with the master and gaffer and to “add a little time” to one’s total month after month to the (illegal) recording of numerical values based on one’s own experience operating presses, shears, or benches. The team-based piece-wage system was especially well suited to channeling worker energies into the activity of self-monitoring and toward checking up on their workmates as well. This was because each worker was well aware (at the latest after the second payday) that it was important to keep pace with the others when it came to timing and precision—but not to be faster than your workmates either. Otherwise you were “pushed to one side, out of the way. Everyone wanted to hold on to his job.”79 Thus, the contours of work experiences were distinguished not only in terms of branches and (entire) plants, workshops, or sections of factories: teams made up of twelve to thirty workers, a master, and plant manager “em-bodied” the salient frame of reference. The foremen played the role of the double-jointed “articulation” between team and plant; it was their function to “swing this way or that”—but they also secured or blocked the “flow of work.” Maintenance of that “flow” was a constant aim of management on the shop floor. In particular, construction plants for large machines (such as locomotives or turbines) collected together a large number of heterogeneous fabrications, from various workshops in a plant. Yet in this framework as well, various modifications, in some cases substantial, were introduced in

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the 1920s, though only in individual branches or firms. Before 1910 and again around 1930, the machine construction section of GHH operated to a significant degree to supply other company plants (mining, ship construction). Nevertheless, the proportions shifted: in the years 1912 to 1914, nearly 70 percent of the value of its products was in the form of semifinished goods (such as wrought-iron pieces); by 1926–27, over 70 percent of total production output consisted of (fully finished) hydraulic and power machines, such as cranes.80 For the workers, this meant that forging and casting had been curtailed; the foreground was now occupied by processing machines, that is, working at presses, milling machines, lathes, and drills. But it should be borne in mind that manual precision work also necessarily played a far more important role than it had in the past in connection with the manufacture and polishing of semifinished products. For the companies interested in achieving and maintaining a relatively high degree of in-house fabrication, two strategies complemented each other; one aimed at insuring quality in the case of product modification or change.81 The other facilitated or utilized heightened competition between the individual plants or workshops, that is, between workers with differing jobs and pay levels (and who also differed in part in their social and family origin). In the case of chassis construction, the materials used were mainly wood, leather, cloth, and paint, but especially glue. In a metal plant, that remained one of the special domains of the nonmetal workers. Large numbers of chassis workers, that is, skilled joiners, upholsterers, tailors, and bodywork painters, derived their “workshop pride” precisely from this distinction. In their case, the relative proximity of their particular product to the final customer was a reason—despite the division of labor and all the “messy work” (painting!) involved—that made it possible for them to associate their own contribution directly with the final external appearance of the finished product, namely, the passenger car or truck as it rolled off the finishing lines. The more that advertising took hold starting in the mid-1920s, the stronger this characteristic dovetailing between consciousness of quality work and pride in performance became. There were numerous types of production where “pride in the product” was far less visible, and was probably less developed, such as in a plant for making fittings, that is, connecting links in sewerage pipes. But workers in branches and plants where production procedures or products (or both) accorded with the image of industrially generated “progress” emphasized their role and “performance standards” even more. This was true, for example, in the case of the construction of warships and artillery cannons in the arms industry before 1914–18. During World War I, the Big Bertha (a heavy mortar manufactured by Krupp) became an often-

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cited symbol of technical refinement and production precision—a means of destruction that was an especially impressive example of “performance standards” and “progress.” In airplane construction, stepped up in the 1930s on a large scale and in a number of plants, the fascination which “advanced,” “large,” “magnificent,” and “dazzling” products could have for the workers who produced them became evident, now in a new form. The “enthusiastic mood” expressed in 1935 or 1937 and the “jubilation” of the work force at the Focke-Wulf (Bremen) aircraft plant82 on the occasion of maiden flights was not something that had in any way been inspired or ordered “from above.” This was a demonstration of genuine enthusiasm about a vivid and palpable success. And what success implied was good prospects for one’s career and earnings in a growth industry—and, at the same time, satisfaction in having had a working hand in one (and perhaps even the) technical symbol of the “modern age.” The daily routines, contacts with material, machines, and coworkers, were all regulated by the specification of production goals and the rules of “the firm.” This everyday external dimension was always a part of the interior world of the plant as well: superiors would observe workers from the boss’s office and patrol up and down between the machines; controllers measured the results, decided about “rejects,” and could threaten workers with the prospect of extra unpaid work. The “silent compulsions” (K. Marx) of the cash nexus were augmented by the expansion of group piecework on a time basis. Parallel with this, differences between workers were emphasized, and this not only at the concrete workplace. In the wake of the policy and ideology of the “factory community,” which had been forcibly introduced since World War I, the (large) plants reserved their monetary “social benefits” only for the veteran, longtime employees. The forms of “silent” constraint even remained comparatively underdeveloped in Germany. To the regret of the trade-union camp, the “five-dollar” wage policy of Henry Ford was not imitated by German factories. Rather, a mixture of “cursing out the workers”83 and appeals to plant loyalty and “German quality work”84 continued to predominate. No matter how many appeals were made, no matter how many orders came down from “upstairs,” and no matter how much “conveyor-belt production” and the multiple overlapping operation of machines were promoted on the shop floor, the patterns of behavior of the workers did not define themselves as the mere products of prevailing working conditions. Rather, it was in the matrix of the differential appropriation of “conditions” by “living labor” where those patterns were produced— that is, concretely and “palpably.” In practice on the job, wage systems were translated into fair wages, or unfair ones, and time orders were transposed into the rhythms of hard work, and work breaks. Action (or

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biding one’s time) was closely bound up with the ensemble of momentary (sense) impressions and longer-term experiences, such as those involving conflicts in the workplace. Rooted in this “situation,” the workers developed a third approach alongside the (rare) alternative of open opposition or the more widespread option of silent complaisance: variants of eigensinnige movements of evasion.

Profiles of Cooperation and Eigensinn On the job, solidarity between fellow workers was required, and often was put into practice and strained to the limits of what was possible. Again and again, cooperation within and between teams proved to be inescapable. It was necessary to secure the incoming supply and onward shipping of materials, semifinished, and finished products. Accidents had to be prevented. Within the teams, it was necessary to make sure that the piecework performance levels did not deviate too much from a margin of 130 percent of the indicated production quota (that is, specified number of pieces per specified time unit). This cooperation based on necessity was, of course, also interlarded with experiences that did not figure into the calculation of the optimal use of one’s own energies. Worker camaraderie presupposed that each individual would do his part, and that each and every man “earned his money.” “Free riders” were harassed or made so miserable they finally left. Nonetheless, workmates in distress were supported, especially those who had earned respect at work or in the neighborhood. Naturally, readiness to help could not be bought “for cash,” or with an “investment” of beer, whisky, or a sausage sandwich. It was crucial to find the “right” balance between cooperation and reserve. At the same time, forms of intercourse were computed in a special “currency” and were not transferable (and thus did not constitute “symbolic capital”85). It was not a matter of any abstract sense of helping one’s fellow man: standards of “good clean work” were central in machine construction. Whoever was “thorough and precise” as a worker on the job certainly had no right to claim assistance from workmates in an emergency—but he did have better chances of getting it (without jeopardizing his own self-respect in the process). Simultaneously, and perhaps precisely because of this cooperation based on necessity, workers often demonstrated mutual distance in a variety of ways. They played harmless or nasty pranks on each other, and practiced a willful Eigensinn, a mixture of self-affirmation and prankish obstinacy.86 Soles or heels of shoes painted red or white, handwheels or spindles that had been rubbed all over with compression grease, a par-

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tially sawed-off broom handle that broke and squirted its contents of stinking cheese onto an unsuspecting worker’s hands and clothing—the victim was marked, and yet at the same time was able (and indeed had to) prove himself. Strength and manual dexterity had to be employed at lightning speed in order to ward off disaster. These forms of body language reflected factory-industrial situations and the proletarian mode of life. In this “horseplay,” hierarchies between those who “had the say” and those who had to carry out orders were demonstrated and reconfirmed, and on occasion questioned as well. The “next time,” perhaps the victim would be one of the “players.” Violent physicality at work can be read as an expression and reconfirmation of experiences which both players and victims shared: being bound tight, fixed on the spot, being marked and made dirty. The actual authors of the daily impositions remained largely or totally removed from the sphere of control of the victims. For the players, violent physical action can be regarded as an element which was part of an effort to be left alone, “with and by themselves” (bei sich).87 These forms of expression were not intended as resistance to impositions “from above.” Rather, they occupied “space” and “time” for themselves, and demonstrated their “willfulness.” Eigensinn took place in isolated moments, but was often repeated. The distress of life and the struggle for survival were mitigated not only in camaraderie—especially in self-willed, eigensinnig action, workers were able to place some distance between themselves and the excessive manipulations and constraints of the factory, at least for the breathing spell of a few minutes. The decisive element here is not an “either-or” of cooperation or conflict, self-willed distance or affection. Rather, the “patchworks” were the shaping factor. Cooperation and Eigensinn alternated in different rhythms. At the same time, they were interlinked: cooperation had many of its “own independent” (eigen) features, and distancing made new cooperation easier. These remarks are not intended to suggest a renewed heroization of proletarian grit. Eigensinn meant distance not just vis-à-vis expectations “from above,” but also toward expectations originating with one’s workmates. A gritty ability to get by may have rested for support on this selfwilled behavior. But no praxis developed from it which might have saturated everyday life with a basic tone of resistance. Eigensinn remained integrated into calculated work—or interrupted the flow of that work, but only for a few moments. It was linked with the conscious and emphatic act of “going the limit and beyond,” “no holds barred” (that is, of excess, dépense). It is likely that such Eigensinn provided the workers with an outlet for relieving the pressure of daily distress. Yet such brusque and contrary behavior directed against “everybody” and “everything”—

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didn’t that also serve as partial compensation for a life whose prospects boiled down to nothing but constant insecurity? One should bear in mind that Eigensinn was not eliminated by the transition to a system of a single worker operating several machines (around 1910 or again after 1924); it was not eliminated by time control practices at the factory gate or the workplace, nor by political terror under fascism. It remained an abiding element of worker behavior.

Life Cycles and the Simultaneity of Privatization and Politicization One can generally assume that in the course of a given biography, differing experiences will be linked together while others are rejected. A striving for achieving “identity” is the common thrust of efforts by both individuals and social groups or classes. Polarities often come into play: for example, political activity or concentration on the private sphere—one seems largely to exclude the other. Yet a closer look at the daily struggle to survive, related forms of experience, and modes of life suggests a further question: are there perhaps a multitude of orientations and patterns of behavior all jumbled together here in a patchwork, a mixtum compositum—yet without being experienced as contradictory?88 A possible path to approach this question is provided by a workman’s journal, an Erinnerungsbuch (book of memories) recorded by Paul Maik, a skilled lathe operator who worked many years in the Krupp plant in Essen. Maik found a way to depict what was on his mind, in his own way: beginning in 1919, he wrote down everything he wished to retain “as a memory.”89 This text, consisting of entries and notes, presents a broad array of perceptions and interests; at the same time, his entries point to “composite mixtures,” synchronisms that do not always seem to be contradictory. Paul Maik was born in 1891. In 1908, he began an apprenticeship in the Krupp plant, and then stayed on with a “steady job” in the employ of the firm, punctuated by a few interruptions, right on down to 1945. In March 1919 (shortly after getting married), he got himself a folio-size thick notebook and started to write down (or paste up) things that struck him as curious or worth remembering. Let’s look at a page from the early 1920s. In the entry for February 19, 1922, there is three-quarters of a page devoted to prices: a three-pound loaf of bread (M 10.20), a pound of lard (M 34), along with prices in particular for different kinds of fat, oils, meat, milk, and potatoes. Underneath, pasted in, is a four-line clipping from a newspaper with the title “Victory of Metal Workers in Essen” (also dated February 19, 1922—it

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notes that the united list of KPD and USPD was victorious in the local Essen municipal election, chalking up 1,489 votes to 263 for the SPD). The remaining part of the page has an entry dated March 2, 1922, noting: “Franziska’s tooth filled,” followed by “bought wood” (February 22) and “first thunderstorm” (March 1, 1922). In the first few years of his journal, he used five to seven double pages a year. For example, the first six months of 1923 cover seven half-pages. The first of these pages features events from “high” politics in their local form: on “January 11, 1923, French march into Essen.” An entry before this notes an “international mass meeting” on January 7, 1923, in Essen, with information on the “comrades” who “spoke,” that is, their countries of origin. On the next double page, both sides have price listings, likewise from January 1923. The following two pages contain a mélange of prices, “tooth pulled”—and on March 31, 1923, “clash” at Krupp plant between workers and French troops, “eight dead and 30 injured.”90 On the upper right page, a “23-hour protest strike at Krupp” (April 3), various prices, and “May 1, 1923—not a day off at the Krupp works,” as well as the note: “According to newspaper reports (about) 100,000 persons demonstrated in Essen.” Going on in the journal, one can regularly find detailed remarks on the weather, interspersed with newspaper clippings reporting on major disasters, especially mine disasters or train crashes. But now the style of the entries begins to change. This is clear if you compare a page from 1932. For the second half of August, Maik notes: “August 16, 1932—shift canceled” (upper left), and beneath this: “August 17, 1932—shift canceled,” and again underneath that: “August 18, 1932: shift canceled.” An entry on the next line reads: “vacation from August 19 to September 2.” Directly to the left underneath: “spinach planted September 30,” followed by an excursion, Catholic Day (September 4, 1932), and three lines later (October 17, 1932): “start of the 40-hour week.” A comment written vertically in the margin: “It’s Reich Chancellor Papen [his] jump-start economic policy?” The right half of the double page begins with: “October 26, 1932—Helene’s marriage to Walter K.” The rest of the page is filled with a spacious entry on the final vote count for the elections to the Reichstag on November 6, 1932. The next double page, upper left, records three canceled shifts, one beneath the next, November 8–10. The left-hand side is covered mainly by a clipping dated November 21: “Tremor in Essen,” referring to the earthquake tremor the previous night, “also felt in other cities.” On the right-hand page, “1933,” begins with the year inscribed in thick numbers: five canceled shifts in January and February, to the left temperatures below zero centigrade, then the explosion of a gas tank in Neunkirchen, “more than 50 dead.” The next double page starts with an entry on the

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left, “planted mountain spinach” (March 8), and to the right below March 9 (covering more than half a page): “March 9. The National Socialists occupy all large Jewish stores in Essen. . . . The other Jewish shops also close out of fear. The occupation lasts only one day.” To the left, below the date March 15: “pansies replanted to the border,” followed on the right by “national holiday” on March 21, referring to the opening of the Reichstag in Potsdam and the elections to the factory committee at Krupp on March 24 (with results from “crafts,” that is, the repair workshops). On the right-hand page, the next entry is on “Hitler’s birthday,” followed by two canceled shifts. This is followed by: “May 1. Day of National Labor, with the slogan! Dignify work, respect workers.” Directly under this: “May 2, canceled shift” (emphasis added). The same side carries entries about an excursion and three more canceled shifts (to the left next to this: “planted beans,” May 19). The following page begins with “my vacation,” July 6–20, 1933, followed by three canceled shifts, then three excursions. The right half of the double page is covered mainly with prices (dated October 9, 1933), and beneath this as the final 1933 entry: “referendum November 12, 1933,” with a clipping on the results of the voting and the Reichtstag election, that is, more than 90 percent in favor, votes for the NSDAP. It is clear that between the early 1920s and the early 1930s, emphases shift. During the period 1919 to 1923–24, many of the pages are filled with handwritten notes on the (inflationary) prices of food items (and entries about children, children’s diseases, excursions, and small trips). At the same time, there are also notes, some quite detailed, on elections to the factory committee, local and Reichstag elections, and the “invasion” of French troops in January 1923. These are all memorabilia from the sphere of organized and formal politics. By the summer of 1932, the detailed lists of prices are by and large gone. The “gainful employment” of the “head of household” has become more irregular,91 even if he has not been permanently fired. In any event, the cycle of family life and Maik’s own experience has changed—the kids have grown, are now teenagers. At the same time, he continues to record “private” activities and “political” events, but hardly venturing any express commentary. It is hard to tell whether (and if so, how) they are connected. Perhaps the emphasis on symbolic stagings provides some indication. May 1, 1933, is highlighted; judged by the size of the entry, this day ranks among the especially memorable events—as though it were one of those moments in which “grand” politics and one’s own everyday life touch and intersect. Despite all his interest in (and often sparse feelings about) elections and

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the government, that is, organized politics, Maik’s own “four walls” remain (or once again become) the central focus.92 In general, the sphere of employment and industrial production revolves around the bread-andbutter matter of wage expectations. During the economic crisis of the winter 1925–26, and especially beginning in the autumn of 1929, this interest is spelled out in terms of one overriding desire: to remain employed no matter what.93 In the notes of this Krupp lathe operator, there is no record of his daily activities at, with, or by means of machines. There is also nothing about possible labor disputes.94 But this is reflective of special features of the “plant culture”: in the case of Krupp, there was no massive and spectacular interference with the organization of the workers’ own forms of expression as there had been at Daimler in 1920, for example, when in the autumn of that year, after a general lockout, Daimler fired a third of its work force, especially unskilled workers.95 Among Paul Maik’s chief memories are aspects of “reproductive labor,” in concrete terms: his garden. Not only in his case, but more generally, gardening or small-plot cultivation was a main supplement in efforts to make ends meet among workers and their families. At least every fourth working-class family in large urban areas farmed a “plot,”96 and was able to grow up to half of its fruits and vegetables there. This was an economic activity carried out largely by single households, and involved very little neighborly cooperation. Maik’s entries during the late 1920s and the 1930s signal a movement toward privatization, but do not by any means rule out the possibility of politicization as a result of the “new era” after 1933. His own excursions and those of his children provide an indication of just how attractive the economic recovery, the armaments boom, and the social-political benefits offered by the Nazi state were to the Germans in the Reich. Whole new areas for action were opened up. To that extent, both an enhanced politicization of the private sphere—and, synchronously—the privatization of politics97 were able to operate here as processes, understood as the formulation and gratifying of one’s own needs and interests. The synchronism of politicization and privatization facilitated the complaisant toleration of impositions coming down from the Nazis, as well as various moves to evade and avoid conflict. In factual terms, both boiled down to the same thing though: going along with things. That is indeed the way it was after 1933 in the life of this lathe operator Paul Maik, a Krupp worker and, until 1933, a member of the German Metalworkers’ Association (DMV), a husband and father. This also meant endurance: “sticking it out” (Durchhalten) after armaments production was stepped up from 1942 on, and even more so during the air raids that ravaged Essen and other cities. Another group was also present in the

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everyday wartime scene on the home front: the “foreign laborers,” the “workers from the East.” There is no information here on whether (and how) Paul Maik got along with them “on the job,”98 whether there was a shift for him in the importance of private and political spheres. The double movement of politicization and privatization,99 with all associated fissures and niches, was in any event a prerequisite for “getting by, surviving”—holding out for “better times,” private and political.

Rhythms of Experience and Collective Crises The production of experience among industrial workers was inextricably bound up with those “connections between generations” (K. Mannheim) that were not generated primarily in the matrix of the factory and neighborhood, even though their reality was palpably felt there. For men of the generation born before 1900 (and thus for Paul Maik, born 1891), employment opportunities in the 1920s were clearly better than those which younger men had to suffice with. On the other hand, among workers over forty, the “experience of the World War” often was superimposed upon unemployment or low wages. 100 Yet misery and distress were present for them in another way. In their minds, military service during the war was seldom synonymous with “comradeship” and “proving one’s mettle.” That was only in war novels. The memories they had were mainly of deprivation and suffering, oppression, and fear of death. The women of that same age group were also confronted with the war: to what extent had they, as “war brides” “soldiers’ wives,” suffered (and hoped)—while at the same time providing in partially new ways for their own survival and that of their relatives? As different as these experiences were, the shared ordeal of collective hunger in the cities during 1916–17, and again after 1918 down to about 1923, remained a formative trauma for men, women, and children alike: never again a “turnip winter”!101 The rhythms of proletarian dependence, that is, the seasonal uncertainties in occupation, the uncertainty about what one’s weekly wages would be, the daily dangers of an accident on the job—all this was exacerbated during the Great Depression, especially beginning with the autumn of 1930. However, even the mass experience of dire distress—that is, of reduced hours and unemployment—affected only certain segments of the society (and not all wage earners and their families). Yet in the factories, the forms of cooperation based on necessity and camaradarie were jeopardized or obstructed. The increasing numbers of new “semiskilled” workers on the job had established their own contexts of cooperation and distrust: “you had to swipe stuff with your eyes there!”102

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A characteristic way of processing experience developed among many who were suffering from hunger: a turn “inward”—that is, silent individual and family suffering, coupled at the same time with an open-eared curiosity listening to the great promises of the “big change” or “revolution.” The interpretations offered by the workers’ parties limited themselves to rhetorical formulas such as were common currency in the “arena” of formal politics. Nonetheless, they also contained the hope that the government, beyond all partisan politics and disputes, would return to the bedrock of the facts and needs of the everyday life of “the many.” In that respect, the similarities between the slogans of the KPD, SPD, and NSDAP are not surprising: “work,” “bread,” and “freedom” were merely blended in different ways.103 These “grand” and yet everydayconcrete symbolic words did not formulate any program, such as how to prevent another “turnip winter,” for example. But they brought together the experiences and sufferings of many—in the form of a hope invested in the state, as a suprapolitical entity, a hope in the reestablishment of a source of authority anterior to and beyond concrete party politics. By contrast, where there was political confrontation, everything—the speakers and campaign literature, and even “graphic” posters—remained on an abstract level. The monotonous repetitive reference to inadequate real wages, as in the case of the SPD, was able only marginally to touch the concrete life circumstances of those affected.104 Women found themselves in an especially precarious situation. They had to take care of the housework—especially among proletarian families, that was generally a foregone conclusion, not open to discussion— both before 1933 and after. Their obligations in the household were not reduced if they also held down a job outside the home (though there were great differences regionally in the degree to which such employment was possible and deemed acceptable). The main tasks of housework consisted of shopping for food and cooking meals. At least in some regions, such as the Ruhr, there was a nutritional “trinity”: sweets, meat, and fats. The sociocultural importance of fatty foods or measures to assure a sufficient supply of cooking oil and bacon were also taken into account by Nazi policies on nutrition.105 For example, an official from the Reich Ministry of Economy, in a memorandum from the winter of 1937–38,106 gave a vivid depiction of the central importance of large amounts of fat in the diet of working-class families (miners and steel mill workers). And the memo made apparent that this was exclusively a question of meals for the males: “The worker at the blast furnace, the laborer who performs heavy labor in the rolling mill or down in a deep shaft, bathed in sweat digging coal eight hours straight, requires an adequate supplement to his energies in the form furnished by a proper diet . . . he takes sandwiches to work

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filled with cabbage, marmalade or fats—margarine, lard—depending on what can be obtained. Previously, sandwiches used to contain thick slices of bacon, but that is no longer available in sufficient quantities. . . . Since fat is scarce, the whole family saves its fat for their breadwinner. In its stead, the family eats cabbage, boiled potatoes and bread with syrup.” Against this backdrop, the agitation of the Nazis claiming that their “national revolution” and the “battles for labor” of the new state or fouryear plan would create “bread” probably appealed to the “breadwinners,” that is, the male consumers, more than it did to the housekeeping women. At the same time, however, much of what the Nazis staged publicly and promised the population was an effort to link up with that abhorrence of “disorder” and “chaos” which was such a natural and self-evident sentiment in working-class life—not just in the workers’ movements, but also in countless working-class households.

Eigensinn and Complaisance in the Face of Domination The profiles of proletarian practice did not change in tune with the rhythms of the macroeconomy and macropolitics. The workers developed and laid claim to their own worlds in plant and workshop. This multilayered quality characterized the factory world even after the takeover of the Nazis and the beginning of constant repression—political and at the hands of the police—and the numerous appeals to a “folk community” transcending the boundaries of class. Despite all the differences (and even isolation) that marked the workshops and teams, as well as the frequent friction between fellow workers, there were, especially from 1936 on, parallel efforts in the factories to achieve “as much as possible” under the changed conditions of restrictive labor legislation and police intervention. The array of prohibitions and controls on wage demands notwithstanding, workers found ways to exploit the bottlenecks in recruitment faced by many factories in 1938 and 1939.107 The enthusiasm of Nazi leaders for wages based on performance probably made it easier to secure a certain leeway when it came to the quantitative measurement or masking of one’s own on-the-job performance. In particular, the priority accorded rearmament and the defense industry offered qualified workers (and groups of workers) an economic and political lever for securing group-specific advantages. Worker displeasure, “loafing” at work, and illegally changing one’s job were not moves leveled against the system of Nazi rule as a whole. Rather, most workers tried to “get hold of something that was their own” (ihr Eigenes aneignen), reappropriating and preserving what they could of it.

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Efforts to secure interests were certainly not some sort of collective resistance to Nazi domination. Rather, this constituted a double movement to parry outside pressures. On the one hand, it was aimed against interference inside and outside the plant; on the other, it attempted to remain free from obligations beyond the perimeter of the small groups of one’s workmates or neighbors, friends or relatives. The objective was to secure time and space in which each person could (also) be by him- or herself. Worker behavior and orientations were distinguished by efforts to achieve distance from impositions coming “from above” and from “next door”: this arena was shaped by various forms of appropriation (Aneignung), but especially by Eigensinn. The functioning of locally and supralocally organized political activity that had gained operative momentum since the late nineteenth century had demonstrated to the masses of dependent workers the importance of pressing their interests and needs “locally, on the spot.”108 This also held true specifically in the case of numerous party and trade-union members. In the perception of these multitudes, neither public, spectacular protest nor the struggle for legally binding agreements was decisive—despite the fact that, on the other hand, the state remained important as a conception of a transcendent and suprapolitical unity. The central overriding concern was the securing of one’s own sphere in everyday practice; this was often carried out in inconspicuous ways. The yardsticks were personal survival or that of one’s family, the respect of fellow workers and neighbors, as well as “no injustices!” on the part of the authorities.109 In respect to the level (or arena) of formal and organized politics, wait-and-see skepticism prevailed as the predominant attitude toward “those up above.” In practical terms, this meant complaisant toleration of domination and fascism by industrial workers. In some cases, eigensinnig acts of reappropriation provided this “trajectory of fall” with considerable nuance, but were able to obstruct it at best only in isolated instances. How then was it possible that staged offerings of the Nazi regime designed to enhance identification found an echo, at least from time to time? There are two aspects to the answer. First of all, the phenomenologically oriented sketches of work processes and experience have outlined the facets of an “individual” (eigen) sphere which evolved over time. For the most part, that sphere developed “out of sight” of observers and controllers. In many respects, there was both relief as well as gratification to be had there, specifically within the laborious round of everyday toil. Seen against such a backdrop, there is a fundamental change in the perspective of how to view “needs for identification.” In light of the fact that a worker had an offsetting psychological “bolster” to fall back on in own’s own individual sphere, participation in staged Nazi events, for example,

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was not necessarily an expression of needs that could not be denied, or were even compulsive. Rather, there seems to be evidence that the decision to participate contained a variant of the skepticism mentioned: waitand-see curiosity. This curiosity was not inexhaustible. After the phase of initial attraction, people began to see the similarities more clearly, especially since the promises of a (national)-revolutionary new beginning and far-reaching improvements in living conditions remained hollow for many in the context of their everyday life. Nonetheless, this curiosity was repeatedly appealed to or (re)awakened by the public staging of new situations of “national rebirth” and “the greatness of the state”: the Saar issue and “freedom to defend the nation” in 1935, the Anschluß of Austria in 1938, and the “outbreak” of the war in 1939. Moreover, the strands of a fair portion of agreement may have been intermingled in this distancing: the issues of “freedom of defense” and “German quality work” found support without having to be given too much of a boost. This brings us to the second aspect. The self-images of the industrial workers, and the images others had of them, indicate that the efforts to distance themselves from impositions (and attractions) utilized a repertoire of symbols drawn from industrial labor that was comprehensible both “within” and “outside” the class.110 The assumption that this involved the “hegemony” of societywide cultural patterns overlooks the process in which such agreement was first created, in each instance anew. To find or generate an echo that was positive in various different contexts—this was the way “unanimity of thought” transcending class and group boundaries was produced or reaffirmed. Nazi propagandists tried hard to make use of individual images and texts, as well as entire sequences of “plausible” signs in the field of symbols; in some cases, they also attempted to shift those images to new positions. Publicly and privately, such attractions and offerings were often accepted, and in many cases appropriated as one’s own. Pictorial “icons” of muscular labor, physical toil, and sweat always called up vivid, direct physical experiences that affected people, ones which millions of individuals (though largely male) were immediately able to comprehend and identify with. The Nazi pictorial media intentionally sought out such links. Parallel with this, and despite the tapping of “icons” from the realm of industry and industrial labor which had enjoyed wide social acceptance since the turn of the century, new emphases came to the fore. With increasing frequency from the late 1920s on, tabloids, illustrated books, and factory newspapers contained representations of bodies and faces which—despite their stylized steely physicality—often bore individual features as well. This too was not a completely novel development, but the working-class press in the 1920s had given far more emphatic

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expression to social and personal objectives utilizing symbols of masses and collectives. By contrast, the individualizing pictorial symbols of the 1930s also represented that “troubled consciousness” about the workers’ situation which few workers showed openly, but which many felt “deep down inside” and were affected by. The symbolism of labor and workers adopted by the Nazi state was ambivalent and open. The forms of representation and expression attracted attention transcending the divisions between classes and strata. These forms were also able to engage the consent of those who did not share proletarian experience. Even in unheroic poses, faces and figures stamped by the honest labor of their hands pointed to a familiar pathos of the “brawny worker.” This found a verbal echo in propaganda slogans such as “hard as Krupp steel!” and “German quality work.” Appeals to “industriousness and work” were intended to be ambiguous and open to multiple interpretation, as in Hitler’s speech on May Day 1933. Being attracted by symbols does not clash with concern about one’s individual material survival. Calculations about the uncertainties of wages and personal job security—that is, about one’s own individual interests—are always shaped by symbolic interpretations. It rapidly became evident that Nazi promises and offerings alluding to or employing symbols presupposed a high degree of self-exploitation: new benches or parks, factory facilities for washing up, and showers or rooms for coffee breaks generally had to be constructed by the workers themselves. On the other hand, then they were available and could be used. If before there had been no opportunity to wash up or perhaps even to shower, a “workforce clubhouse” served not only as a propaganda showpiece—it also constituted a genuine improvement in living and working conditions, especially in factories located in rural areas.111 People developed their criteria for a better and even more beautiful life in terms of such changes, individually rather unspectacular, in their humdrum workaday existence. To that extent, the “aesthetization of politics” (Walter Benjamin) was not just an attempt at manipulation—it was also a response to everyday experiences and ambitions.112 The arena of Eigensinn was not sealed off hermetically. Orientations and patterns of behavior crystallized at several levels, and remained “multilayered.” Symbolic interpretations, in which concrete experiences113 and “grand” goals could be projected one onto the other, unfolded and developed in an uneven way. They were in keeping with socioeconomic movements and practices of domination, yet without being dependent on them. Images and self-images saturated with experience and symbolically condensed (and able in turn to leave their imprint upon experience) could be exploited in numerous ways—even as a “[gold] mine for the Hitler movement” (Ernst Bloch).

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Notes 1. For the Rhenish area of the Ruhr, see the references in D. Peukert, Die KPD im Widerstand. Verfolgung und Untergrundarbeit an Rhein und Ruhr 1933– 1945 (Wuppertal, 1980), 32ff. For the local general strike in the Württemberg worker-farmer village of Mössingen, see H.-J. Althaus et al., Da ist nirgends nichts gewesen außer hier (Berlin, 1982); regarding a more “normal” course of events, i.e., accommodation after January 30, see G. Mai, Die Geislinger Metallarbeiterbewegung zwischen Klassenkampf und Volksgemeinschaft 1931–1933/ 34 (Düsseldorf, 1984). 2. G. Schwarz, Kohlenpott 1931 ed. E. Schulz (Essen, 1986 [Berlin, 1931]), 181, emphasis added. One should bear in mind that in the Ruhr, at the latest following the September 1930 elections, it had become quite clear that the “starving army” of unemployed there were hardly leaning toward the SPD—their inclinations lay not just with the KPD (or the Catholic Zentrum), but evidently also to some extent with the NSDAP, in any case at the level of Reichstag and state elections. See the data for Essen in H. Kühr, Parteien und Wahlen im Stadt und Landkreis Essen in der Zeit der Weimarer Republik (Düsseldorf, 1973), 267–68, and the (self-)critical appeal to the SPD by E. H. Schlensker, “Alarmzeichen an der Ruhr,” Klassenkampf 4 (1930): 587–91. 3. See, for example, “Berichte der Gestapo-Leitstellen Düsseldorf, Recklinghausen und Dortmund für das Ruhrgebiet vom Frühjahr 1934 bis Herbst 1936,” Geheimes Staatsarchiv/Preußischer Kulturbesitz, rep. P 90, nos. 9,4–9,6; 14,3, 14,5, and 14,6. 4. W. Hoegner, Flucht vor Hitler: Erinnerungen an die Kapitulation der ersten deutschen Republik 1933 (Munich, 1977 [manuscript 1937]), 126f. 5. J. Goebbels, Vom Kaiserhof zur Reichskanzlei, 41st ed. (Munich, 1943 [1934]), 251; see E. Fröhlich, ed., Die Tagebücher des Joseph Goebbels, pt. 1, vol. 2, (Munich, 1987), 357–61. The notes dated January 31, 1933, stated “the old man” (Hindenburg) and “Hitler.” On retouching the text in the publication of Vom Kaiserhof zur Reichskanzlei, see the introduction of the editor, ibid., pt. 1, vol. 1 (Munich, 1987), xl–xli. 6. I. Kershaw, The “Hitler Myth”: Image and Reality in the Third Reich (Oxford, 1987), 57ff. 7. Projekt Ideologie-Theorie, Faschismus und Ideologie, vol. 1 (Berlin, 1980), 81ff., 107ff.; W. Elfferding, “Von der proletarischen Masse zum Kriegsvolk. Massenaufmarsch und Öffentlichkeit im deutschen Faschismus am Beispiel des 1. Mai 1933,” in Inszenierung der Macht. Ästhetische Faszination im Faschismus, ed. K. Behnken and F. Wagner (Berlin, 1987), 18–26, 36–43. 8. See reports of “movement veterans” written in 1936: C. Schmidt, “Zu den Motiven ‘alter Kämpfer’ in der NSDAP,” in Die Reihen fast geschlossen. Beiträge zur Geschichte des Alltags unterm Nationalsozialismus, ed. D. Peukert and J. Reulecke (Wuppertal, 1981), 34ff. While the SA offered a social network to isolated individuals who often had botched their careers, the attempts by the KPD to fight back “militantly” activated patterns of “local neighborhood” solidarity in which physical violence was considered unavoidable or was highly valued; see

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more generally E. Rosenhaft, Beating the Fascists? The German Communists and Political Violence 1929–1933 (Cambridge, 1983), esp. 128ff.; on “red” or KPD demonstration practices, see G. Bers, ed., “Rote Tage” im Rheinland. Demonstrationen des Roten Frontkämpferbundes (RFB) im Gau Mittelrhein 1925–1928 (Wentorf, 1980). 9. Goebbels, in his 1934 autobiography, presented the Nazi May Day celebrations as the high point of the Nazi “seizure of power”; see Goebbels, Vom Kaiserhof, 306–8; It is the closing and crowning episode there; see Fröhlich, ed., Tagebücher, 409, 413ff. 10. For a general picture of workers’ organizations after January 30, 1933, see H. A. Winkler, Der Weg in die Katastrophe. Arbeiter und Arbeiterbewegung in der Weimarer Republik 1930–1933 (Berlin and Bonn, 1987), 867ff.; on the Social Democratic segment of the miners’ movement in the Ruhr, see D. Peukert and F. Bajohr, Spuren des Widerstands. Die Bergarbeiterbewegung im Dritten Reich und im Exil (Munich, 1987), 14–43, and on “spontaneous” terror during March–April 1933, 61ff.; for local developments, see Mai, Geislinger Metallarbeiterbewegung, 75ff; G. Hetzer, “Die Industriestadt Augsburg. Eine Sozialgeschichte der Arbeiteropposition,” in Bayern in der NS-Zeit, ed. M. Broszat et al., vol. 3 (Munich and Vienna, 1981), 93ff., 106ff.; W. Freitag, Spenge 1900–1950 (Bielefeld, 1988), 458ff. Numerous local, evidently spontaneous occupations of trade-union houses are part of the prehistory of May 2; see G. Mai, “Die Nationalsozialistische Betriebszellen-Organisation,” Vierteljahrshefte für Zeitgeschichte 31 (1983): 607–8. 11. “Der 1. Mai 1933,” Gewerkschafts-Zeitung 43 (April 29, 1933); reprint (Berlin and Bonn, 1983), 259–60. 12. On this and the following, see Winkler, Weg in die Katastrophe, 907ff., 918ff. 13. For the election returns, see ibid., 907ff. 14. On the program, its changes and organizational efforts, i.e., the “vicious circle” consisting of “inadequate organizing,” “the lack of a financial basis,” and “lack of continuity in RGO work,” see W. Müller, Lohnkampf, Massenstreik, Sowjetmacht. Ziele und Grenzen der “Revolutionären Gewerkschafts-Opposition” (RGO) in Deutschland 1928 bis 1933 (Cologne, 1988), esp. 301–36, quote 317; on a local situation, namely, Hochlarmark (near Bochum), see M. Zimmermann, Schachtanlage und Zechenkolonie. Leben, Arbeit und Politik in einer Arbeitersiedlung 1880–1980 (Essen, 1987), 171f., 174f. 15. Yet in the Ruhr mining industry, the percentages of the Christian Union, i.e., the so-called Unified Association (Einheitsverband) were greater, as in the case of the Oberhausen Jacobi and Ludwig mines of the GHH: 38 or 39 percent “Christian,” 28 or 30 percent “National Socialists”; the RGO picked up a recorded total of “zero” votes. In the previous election in 1931, the RGO had been the strongest faction in the Jacobi mine, polling some 30 percent, followed by the “Christians” with 28 percent; at the Ludwig mine, in contrast, the “Christians” tallied 37 percent, while the RGO garnered 25 percent of the vote; see Haniel Archives, GHH 400150/3, fol. 188, Bergwerksabteilung, March 30, 1933. 16. However, the apparatus of repression, i.e., Gestapo officials, suspected there was a germ of opposition, resistance—leading ultimately to rebellion and

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overthrow—in any and every form of distancing; see for the Ruhr the reports of the Gestapo headquarters (Berichte der Gestapo-Leitstellen); for central and southern Hessia, see T. Klein, ed., Die Lageberichte der Geheimen Staatspolizei über die Provinz Hessen-Nassau 1933–1936 (Cologne and Vienna, 1986), as well as reports of the administrative offices: Klein, ed., Der Regierungsbezirk Kassel 1933–1936 (Marburg, 1985). The breadth and extent of potential worker “responsiveness” to Nazi and NSBO goals and activities, especially for the Berlin area, has been analyzed and categorized in terms of phases and plant size (from 1932 on, the NSBO was increasingly active in small and middle-size factories), branches, and social strata by V. Kratzenberg, Arbeiter auf dem Weg zu Hitler. Die nationalsozialistische Betriebszellen-Organisation, ihre Entstehung, ihre Programmatik, ihr Scheitern 1927–1934 (Frankfurt am Main, 1987), 195ff. Worker voting patterns in any of the parliamentary elections down to March 5, 1933, can be properly evaluated only if the “points of entry” for forms of complaisant toleration and positive acceptance of fascist politics are identified and examined; for an analysis of voter behavior, see J. Falter and D. Hänisch, “Die Anfälligkeit von Arbeitern gegenüber der NSDAP bei den Reichstagswahlen 1928–1933,” Archiv für Sozialgeschichte 26 (1986): 179–216, and the useful survey in P. Manstein, Die Mitglieder und Wähler der NSDAP 1919–1933 (Frankfurt am Main, 1988), 11ff. 17. But there are also indications of double membership which the NSBO tolerated; see Mai, “Die Nationalsozialistische Betriebszellen-Organisation,” 604– 5. 18. A. Krebs, Tendenzen und Gestalten der NSDAP. Erinnerungen an die Frühzeit der Partei (Stuttgart, 1959), quoted in ibid., 604. G. Mai largely accepts this characterization; the interpretation of Kratzenberg, Arbeiter auf dem Weg zu Hitler, 272f., tends to point in a similar direction. Mai also argues that fluctuation was “quite high” (p. 605). But he overlooks that the pattern for leaving or resigning from the party within the first two years after joining conforms almost completely to patterns K. Schönhoven has established for fluctuation in the free unions after about 1900; see his Expansion und Konzentration. Studien zur Entwicklung der Freien Gewerkschaften im Wilhelminischen Deutschland 1890 bis 1914 (Stuttgart, 1980), 178–98, as well as Schönhoven, “Innerorganisatorische Probleme der Gewerkschaften in der Endphase der Weimarer Republik,” in “Anhang: Gewerkschaften in der Krise,” supplement in Gewerkschafts-Zeitung 1929–1933, 1933; reprint (Bonn, 1983), 73–104. 19. See Mai, “Die nationalsozialistische Betriebszellen-Organisation,” 579ff., 585ff., 590ff., 600ff. 20. Quoted in Peukert and Bajohr, Spuren des Widerstands, 59. 21. K. Behnken, ed., Deutschlandberichte der Sozialdemokratischen Partei Deutschlands (Sopade) 1934–1940, vol. 1, 1934 (Frankfurt am Main, 1980), 428ff. (August–September 1934); see 207ff. (June–July) and 106ff. (May–June); for Berlin see (April–May), 29. 22. For workers in the armaments sector, note the worried reports of the SD as well as the “Trustee for Labor” on “absenteeism,” 1937–39. The finding that there was a relatively greater degree of skepticism among workers can be upheld even if that skeptical attitude is not viewed as the beginning of antifascist opposi-

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tion or “sabotage” of war policy; but see T. W. Mason, Arbeiterklasse und Volksgemeinschaft (Opladen, 1975), 167ff., and Mason, “The Workers’ Opposition in Nazi Germany,” History Workshop Journal, no. 11 (1981): 120–37. 23. Behnken, ed., Deutschlandberichte, vol. 4, 1937, 1238ff. (September); vol. 5, 1938, 455f. (April–May). Note also the reflection of a mixture of “concord” and “discord” in reports by district administration heads (Landräte) of February 1936, for example, “Sonderfrage: Mit welchen Gefühlen tritt die Bevölkerung in das letzte Jahr des Vierjahresplans der Führers?” in Klein, ed., Die Lageberichte der Geheimen Staatspolizei, 701ff., 713ff., 721ff., 733–40. 24. I believe this question is broader than that posed by G. Mai, who examines “under what structural prerequisites and individual constellations workers were prepared to endorse National Socialist ideas and join their organizations”; see Mai, “Die Nationalsozialistische Betriebszellen-Organisation,” 574. The word join here presupposes a substantial degree of active and “conscious” affiliation. In contrast, it should be kept in mind that forms of noninterference and complaisance were at least as crucial for the takeover of power and (relative) stability of fascist rule; on this perspective, see also M. H. Kele, Nazis and Workers: National Socialist Appeals to German Workers, 1919–1933 (Chapel Hill, 1972). On social-psychological attitudes, see the evaluation of a survey from 1929–31 that was not published at the time: E. Fromm, Arbeiter und Angestellte am Vorabend des Dritten Reiches, ed. W. Bonß (Stuttgart, 1980), 250ff.; according to this survey, “only 15 percent” of those interviewed agreed with “the socialist line both intellectually and emotionally” (p. 250). 25. On the spectrum of patterns of behavior ranging from partial to general criticism of the system and from private to state-oriented sphere of activity for actions, i.e., from “nonconformity” to “resistance” under National Socialism, see D. Peukert, Inside Nazi Germany: Conformity, Opposition and Racism in Everyday Life (New Haven, 1987), 81–85; however, the question of a combination of “both options,” of especial interest in this connection, plays no role here. Another useful distinction is that between programmatically based resistance and passive or partial opposition, as well as behavior which “actually exercised a restraining influence on Nazi rule and Nazi ideology,” i.e., “resistivity” (Resistenz—see the Glossary); see M. Broszat, “Resistenz und Widerstand,” in Broszat et al., eds., Bayern in der NS-Zeit, vol. 4 (Munich and Vienna, 1981), 697. However, I am concerned with a reversal in the perspective: in the direction of motivations and practices of complaisance and agreement. [Complaisance (Hinnehmen) is used here in the sense of a disposition to accommodate and comply, a mode of complacency.—TRANS.] 26. For a large plant in heavy industry, see the “assembly plan for the march” issued by the factory committee (!) of the plant sections Sterkrade and the central management of the GuteHoffnungshütte (GHH) Oberhausen, dated April 25, 1933, Haniel-Archiv, GHH 4001026/3. 27. On the growing generation gap in outlook, especially on the importance of commercial mass entertainment for young men and women (in Frankfurt am Main), see J. Wickham, “Working-Class Movement and Working-Class Life: Frankfurt am Main during the Weimar Republic,” Social History 8 (1983): 315– 43 (shorter version in Sozialwissenschaftliche Informationen 13, no. 2 (1984):

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22–30). On the (academic) discussion regarding “embourgeoisement” in the late 1920s, see B. Mahnkopf, Verbürgerlichung. Die Legende vom Ende des Proletariats (Frankfurt am Main and New York, 1985), 88ff., esp. 107ff. 28. Regarding the style of May Day celebrations during the Weimar Republic, especially the ambivalence of cultural-sociological efforts to transmit a renewal of utopian perspectives to their public via mass games and staged events, see G. Korff, “Rote Fahnen und geballte Faust: Zur Symbolik der Arbeiterbewegung in der Weimarer Republik,” in Fahnen, Fäuste, Körper, ed. D. Petzina (Essen, 1986), 54–60; for an analysis which puts greater emphasis on the “subliminal” disciplining impact of such mass movements, see G. Hauk, “ ‘Armeekorps auf dem Weg zur Sonne’. Einige Bemerkungen zur kulturellen Selbstdarstellung der Arbeiterbewegung,” in ibid., 69–89; see likewise Freitag, Spenge, 336ff. 29. The relative strength of the Catholic workers’ movement did not act as a unifying force; on the retreat of the SPD from the streets into the meeting halls after 1926 (in the town of Singen [Baden]), see G. Zang, “Die KPD besetzt den ‘öffentlichen Raum,’ ” in Zang, ed., Arbeiterleben in einer Randregion (Konstanz, 1987), 224ff. 30. See the exact reconstruction in T. Kurz, “Blutmai”. Sozialdemokraten und Kommunisten im Brennpunkt der Berliner Ereignisse von 1929 (Berlin and Bonn, 1988). 31. On the intensification of generational differences and their consequences for the organized workers’ movements, especially the growing distance felt among younger workers who were trying to sample and utilize the new “mass culture,” see Wickham, “Working-Class Movement.” 32. E. Lucas, Das Scheitern der deutschen Arbeiterbewegung (Frankfurt am Main, 1983), 89ff., 96. 33. See the overview in K. Rohe, Vom Revier zum Ruhrgebiet. Wahlen, Parteien, Politische Kultur (Essen, 1986); especially S. H. F. Hickey, Workers in Imperial Germany: The Miners of the Ruhr (Oxford, 1985), as well as the penetrating study on the orientation toward the Zentrum party among mobile skilled workers and long-established veteran workers in Düsseldorf in the 1890s and after 1900 by M. Nolan, Social Democracy and Society: Working-Class Radicalism in Düsseldorf, 1890–1920 (Cambridge, 1981), esp. 44ff., 115ff.; on the final phase of the Weimar Republic, to date only: A. Klein-Reesink, Textilarbeiter und Nationalsozialismus in Westmünsterland (Münster, 1981). See also the minutes of Verhandlungen des 13. Kongresses der christlichen Gewerkschaften Deutschlands, Düsseldorf, 18.–20. Sept. 1932 (n.p., n.d.) and Drucksachen des 13. Kongresses der christlichen Gewerkschaften Deutschlands (n.p., n.d.). 34. Overview in H. Mommsen, “Soziale und politische Konflikte an der Ruhr, 1905–1924,” in Mommsen, ed., Arbeiterbewegung und industrieller Wandel. Studien zu gewerkschaftlichen Organisationsproblemen im Reich und an der Ruhr (Wuppertal, 1980), 79ff.; a stimulating study in respect to questions regarding the orientation of worker protest in terms of concepts of justice and injustice is B. Moore, Injustice: The Social Bases of Obedience and Revolt (White Plains, 1978). There can be no question that attempts to stage an uprising organized by the KPD in March 1921 were not in tune with the sentiments of the working “masses” at the time, i.e., the predominant mixture of resignation and skepticism

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in their ranks (against new initiatives for large-scale organizing and action to change society). There was little support for for the action (workers on the main docks in Hamburg, chemical workers in large plants, and miners in central Germany); see S. Koch-Baumgarten, Aufstand der Avantgarde. Die Märzaktion der KPD 1921 (Frankfurt am Main and New York, 1986), esp. 141ff., 157ff., 175ff., 269ff., 295ff. Regional studies are indispensable; on eastern Lower Saxony, see F. Boll, Massenbewegungen in Niedersachsen 1906–1920 (Bonn, 1981); though largely limited to the SPD, a monograph on the German far north that also treats the struggles in the workplace is R. Paetau, Konfrontation oder Kooperation. Arbeiterbewegung und bürgerliche Gesellschaft im ländlichen Schleswig-Holstein und in der Industriestadt Kiel zwischen 1900 und 1925 (Neumünster, 1988), 336ff. 35. See I. Steinisch, “Die gewerkschaftliche Organisation der rheinischwestfälischen Arbeiterschaft in der eisen- und stahlerzeugenden Industrie 1918– 1924,” in Arbeiterbewegung und industrieller Wandel, ed. H. Mommsen (Wuppertal, 1980), 117–39. 36. M. Ruck, Die Freien Gewerkschaften im Ruhrkampf 1923 (Cologne, 1986), 124ff., 154ff., 181ff., 395ff. 37. M. Ruck, Bollwerk gegen Hitler? Arbeiterschaft, Arbeiterbewegung und die Anfänge des Nationalsozialismus (Cologne, 1988), 69ff. 38. On the problem of “multilayered revolutionary dialectic,” see E. Bloch, “Summary Transition: Non-Contemporaneity and Obligation to its Dialectic,” in Heritage of Our Times, trans. Neville and Stephen Plaice (Berkeley, 1990), 97– 148. 39. See the overview in A. von Saldern, “Arbeiterkulturbewegung in Deutschland in der Zwischenkriegszeit,” in Arbeiterkulturen zwischen Alltag und Politik, ed. F. Boll (Vienna, 1986), 59–64. 40. On criticism of the romanticizing glorification of neighborhood, see E. Brükker, “Die Genossenschaftssiedlung ‘Lindenhof.’ Nachbarschaftsstrukturen und ihre Veränderung in der Weimarer Republik bis in die 50er Jahre” (M.A. thesis, Free University, Berlin, 1987), 97–131. Extremely impressive material indicative of friction and tensions in working-class neighborhoods in northwestern industrial towns in Britain can be found in E. Roberts, A Woman’s Place: An Oral History of Working-Class Women 1890–1940 (Oxford, 1984), 183– 201. 41. On the fundamental binding power of “social milieu,” at least down to 1933, see M. R. Lepsius, “Parteiensystem und Sozialstruktur: zum Problem der Demokratisierung der Gesellschaft,” in Wirtschaft, Geschichte und Wirtschaftsgeschichte, Festschrift F. Lütge, ed. W. Abel et al. (Stuttgart, 1966), 383ff. In contrast, on conceptual “fuzziness” in respect to “camp” and “milieu,” and their synchronism using the example of workers in the Ruhr, see especially A. von Plato, “ ‘Ich bin mit allen gut ausgekommen.’ Oder: war die Ruhrarbeiterschaft vor 1933 in politische Lager gespalten?” in “Die Jahre weiß man nicht, wo man die heute hinsetzen soll” Lebensgeschichte und Sozialkultur im Ruhrgebiet 1930–1960, ed. L. Niethammer, vol. 1 (Bonn, 1983), 60ff. 42. Schwarz, Kohlenpott 1931, 174. 43. See, on this and the following, V. Turner, The Forest of Symbols: Aspects

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of Ndembu Ritual, 2d ed. (Ithaca and London, 1973), 27ff. 44. There are analogies here to what the anthropologist Clifford Geertz has described as the logic of the cockfight, using the example of cockfighting in Bali: i.e., “deep play” as the concurrence of an intra- and extramural status struggle and the staged presentation of male identity; see Geertz, “ ‘Deep play’: Notes on the Balinese Cockfight,” in his The Interpretation of Cultures: Selected Essays (New York, 1973), 432ff., esp. 435f. 45. See the overview in G. Korff, “Rote Fahnen und Tableaux Vivants. Zum Symbolverständnis der deutschen Arbeiterbewegung im 19. Jahrhundert,” in Studien zur Arbeiterkultur, ed. A. Lehmann (Münster, 1984), 103–40, esp. 108– 20. 46. Hitler’s “Rede zum 1. Mai,” in Project Ideologie-Theorie, Faschismus und Ideologie, 136, 135. 47. Some three thousand men took part in plant ceremonies at MANAugsburg, about 60 percent of the workforce; two thousand participated in the subsequent procession, approximately 40 percent of the total; see G. Hetzer, “Die Industriestadt Augsburg,” 98. The behavior of Franz Vogt evidently constituted an exception: he went out hiking in a quiet “pine forest” near Bielefeld on May 1; see his autobiographical memoirs of March 1934, noted in Peukert and Bajohr, Spuren des Widerstands, 31; for Social Democrats in Munich, see the comment by the Reichstag deputy Wilhelm Hoegner: “I celebrated the Social Democratic holiday together with my wife and children in the company of some one hundred comrades in a forest restaurant outside of Munich,” Hoegner, Flucht vor Hitler, 179. On the Catholic Workers’ Movement (KAB) in western Germany, which had always rejected the socialist holiday of May Day, note J. Aretz, Katholische Arbeiterbewegung und Nationalsozialismus (Mainz, 1978), 86; according to Aretz, KAB members in Dortmund participated in the May Day 1933 procession there, and the KAB regional association in Recklinghausen supported local Nazi celebrations and organizers. 48. Hauk, “ ‘Armeekorps auf dem Weg zur Sonne,’ ” 79–89. 49. E. Bloch, “Nicht Hades, sondern Himmel auf Erden” (1932), in Bloch, Erbschaft dieser Zeit (Frankfurt am Main, 1962), 157. 50. T. Mason, “Die Bändigung der Arbeiterklasse im nationalsozialistischen Deutschland. Eine Einleitung,” in Angst, Belohnung, Zucht und Ordnung. Herrschaftsmechanismen im Nationalsozialismus, ed. C. Sachse et al. (Opladen, 1982), 33; see 47ff. 51. Peukert, Inside Nazi Germany, 208–248; G. Bock, Zwangssterilisation im Nationalsozialismus. Studien zur Rassenpolitik und Frauenpolitik (Opladen, 1986), chaps. 2–4. 52. For a rather skeptical assessment of the chances for achieving wage hikes in the heavy armaments industry after 1936–37, see R. Hachtmann, “Beschäftigungslage und Lohnentwicklung in der deutschen Metallindustrie 1933–1949,” Historische Sozialforschung 19 (1981): 42–68. However, it should be noted that even small increases for individual workers constituted a reversal of the “trend” evident roughly after 1928; moreover, in the light of declining hourly wages, those increases could be achieved only by extended working hours and

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overtime. In addition, family and household incomes were probably on the rise (as a result of the increasing number of gainfully employed family members); on this, see G. Mai, “ ‘Warum steht der deutsche Arbeiter zu Hitler?’ Zur Rolle der deutschen Arbeitsfront im Herrschaftssystem des Dritten Reiches,” Geschichte und Gesellschaft 12 (1986): 222; it would be necessary to examine the extent of distribution (generally unequal) within the family or household. See also the regional aspect (a clear upswing from 1936–37 on) in Zimmermann, Schachtanlage und Zechenkolonie, 191ff. 53. T. Siegel, “Lohnpolitik im nationalsozialistischen Deutschland,” in Sachse et al., eds., Angst, Belohnung, Zucht und Ordnung, 109ff., 124ff. 54. Individual references, nonetheless reflecting the existence of more widespread experiences and expectations, can be found in interviews with former workers in the truck and locomotive manufacturing firm Lkw- und Lokomotivenbau, Henschel-Kassel, conducted in September 1984, March 1985, and the autumn of 1987 (see interviews with H. A., A. B., H. D., W. D., G. M., D. T., W. W., A. B., H. Ra., W. F., F. H., O. M. and G. R.); transcriptions of interviews with these and other workers are available for perusal in the Max-Planck-Institut für Geschichte, Göttingen. See also comments in interviews in P. Schirmbeck, ed., “Morgen kommst Du nach Amerika”. Erinnerungen an die Arbeit bei Opel 1917–1987 (Berlin and Bonn, 1988), 92, 95ff. Clear references on the opportunities of semiskilled workers can be found especially in R. Hachtmann, “Arbeitsmarkt und Arbeitszeit in der deutschen Industrie 1929–1939,” Archiv für Sozialgeschichte 27 (1987): 221f., 226. For the parallel in respect to the hopes for advancement and “new departure” entertained by comparatively pro-Nazi young miners (in the Ruhr), see Zimmermann, Schachtanlage und Zechenkolonie, 184ff. For a contemporary account that, inter alia, stressed the necessity for measures supporting wage policy and social policy in the “new state,” at the same time emphasizing their feasibility, see F. Fendt, Der ungelernte Industriearbeiter (Munich and Leipzig, 1936). 55. Documented in great detail in R. Hachtmann, “Lebenshaltungskosten und Reallöhne während des ‘Dritten Reiches,’ ” Vierteljahrschrift für Sozial- und Wirtschaftsgeschichte 75 (1988): 32–73. 56. There was an expansion of the group of those eligible for vacation and an increase in the length of the annual vacation period for numerous industrial workers within the framework of Nazi labor policy (economically quite functional and increasingly necessary for the reproduction of labor capacity), especially when compared with the period 1929–33—e.g., a one-week or two-week (now far more common than earlier) agreed annual vacation, as well as KdF trips and other improvements, such as paid holidays during the week (beginning in 1937); see Sachse et al., eds., Angst, Belohnung, Zucht und Ordnung, 275–328. 57. Mason, “Die Bändigung,” 33. 58. J. Mooser, Arbeiterleben in Deutschland, 1900–1970. Klassenlagen, Kultur und Politik (Frankfurt am Main, 1984). 59. But see especially the contribution by D. Wierling in this volume. 60. See in particular F.-J. Brüggemeier, Leben vor Ort. Ruhrbergleute und Ruhrbergbau, 1898–1919 (Munich, 1983), esp. 58ff., 102ff., 124ff., 136ff.,

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142ff.; H. Steffens, Autorität und Revolte. Alltagsleben und Streikverhalten der Bergarbeiter an der Saar im 19. Jahrhundert (Weingarten, 1987), 119ff., 246ff. See also especially the essay by W. Kaschuba in the present volume. 61. On the (often class-transcending) images and conceptions of technology and “large machinery,” see W. Schivelbusch, Geschichte der Eisenbahnreise. Die Industrialisierung von Raum und Zeit im 19. Jahrhundert (Munich and Vienna, 1977); W. Segebrecht, Literarische Technik-Bilder (Tübingen, 1987). On the perception of industrial workers (male and female) in bourgeois-literary and bourgeois-artistic milieus, see K. Bogdal, Schaurige Bilder. Die Arbeiter im Blick des Bürgers (Frankfurt am Main, 1978); regarding representations and (posed) photographic shots of workers, see R. Hiepe, Riese Proletariat und große Maschinerei. Arbeiterfotografie von den Anfängen bis 1980, exhibition catalog (Erlangen, 1983), and my article “Industriebilder—Bilder der Industriearbeit?” in Historische Anthropologie 1 (1993), 394–430; especially intriguing are L. Passerini, Fascism in Popular Memory (Cambridge, 1987), 48ff. and P. Joyce, ed., The Historical Meanings of Work (Cambridge, 1987). 62. The historical investigation of labor processes and working-class modes of life owes its decisive impetus and inspiration to studies directly or indirectly stimulated by the research of E. P. Thompson, D. Montgomery, H. Gutman, and M. Perrot. For an “early” example of such work, see J. W. Scott, The Glassmakers of Carmaux (Cambridge, Mass., 1974). However, it should be noted that these investigations concentrate on the years up to the beginning of the twentieth century, or continuing down to 1914. When it comes to the period between the world wars and the development of industry, there is virtually nothing on the various waves of “rationalization”; one rare exception is S. Jefferys, Management and Managed: Fifty Years of Crisis at Chrysler (Cambridge, 1986). 63. On the rapid changes that took place in underground mining during a first “wave” roughly between 1924–26 and 1936, see D. Peukert, “Industrialisierung des Bewußtseins? Arbeitserfahrungen von Ruhrbergleuten im 20. Jahrhundert,” in Arbeit und Arbeitserfahrung in der Geschichte, ed. K. Tenfelde (Göttingen, 1986), 97ff. 64. See H. Popitz et al., Technik und Industriearbeit, 3d ed. (Tübingen, 1976), 112ff., 128ff. 65. See statements by (unionized) metalworkers around 1910 compiled by Adolf Levenstein based on his questionnaire survey: Levenstein, Die Arbeiterfrage (Munich, 1912), 51 (iron lathe operator). 66. Note the jubilee portraits regularly published in the Hanomag-Werkszeitung beginning with its first issue (1936). 67. See “Reisebericht” (travel report) by Stieler, factory engineer in the machine production plant Sterkrade of the GHH, dealing with a conference of the Committee on Time and Motion Studies held in Berlin, submitted June 11, 1920, Haniel Archives, GHH 30411/45. 68. “Reisebericht Brill,” March 20, 1934, Haniel Archives, GHH 40420/52, 1f.; the English term “fool proof” appears in the original German. The question of a change in work routines, in the sense of “rationalization,” has been dealt with only for the phase of female labor during World War I; it is the topic of a

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study that collates important data and material on union wage disputes and especially the (state) arbitration system of the 1920s: see B. Adam, Arbeitsbeziehungen in der bayerischen Großstadtmetallindustrie von 1914–1932 (Munich, 1983), esp. 161. On developments in the area of tools and technology, see the excellent survey in R. Berthold, ed., Produktivkräfte in Deutschland 1917/18 bis 1945 (Berlin [GDR], 1988), chaps. 2.1–2.4 69. Haniel Archives, GHH 40232/2, “Gesamt-Untersuchung Radsatzwerk,” April 11, 1934. 70. On riveting, see the photographic material in section Lj in HanomagArchiv/Historisches Museum Hannover (they can be dated to about 1925); see likewise the Hanomag project (in progress) by the author and M. Mende (Braunschweig). On damage to hearing, see Deutscher Metallarbeiterverband, ed., Arbeiterferien (unter besonderer Berücksichtigung der Verhältnisse in der Metallindustrie) (Stuttgart, 1913), 10; on welding, see the interview with G. R., a former electrowelder in locomotive construction in Henschel-Kassel beginning in 1937: interview of August 27, 1987 (see n. 54 above). 71. See interview with H. D., former shears operator in Henschel-Kassel from 1938 on: interview, September 28, 1984; likewise, interview with H. Ra., former shears operator in Henschel-Kassel from 1946 on: interview, August 27, 1987; see interview with L. P., 1924–74, employed with Hanomag in Hannover, until 1939 in locomotive boiler construction: interview, March 15, 1987; on this and the following, see also the interview with K. Rt., apprentice mechanic in Hanomag 1924–28, from 1933 on employed there in motor manufacturing: interview, December 15, 1986 (for all interviews, see n. 54 above). 72. “Reisebericht Brill,” 2; see Schirmbeck, ed., “Morgen kommst Du nach Amerika,” 58ff., emphasis added. 73. See the later report (about 1945–47) by the development engineer Hagenbucher, typewritten, Historical Archives, Krupp, VII f 1346. 74. R. Lang and W. Hellpach, Gruppenfabrikation (Berlin, 1922), 77. 75. Ibid., 168–71; see interview with L. P. (n. 71 above) and R. F., employed with Hanomag/Hannover in motor manufacturing: interview, December 15, 1986 (see n. 54 above). 76. A. Lüdtke, “ ‘Deutsche Qualitätsarbeit,’ ‘Spielereien’ am Arbeitsplatz und ‘Fliehen’ aus der Fabrik: Industrielle Arbeitsprozesse und Arbeiterverhalten in den 1920er Jahren—Aspekte eines offenen Forschungsfeldes,” in Arbeiterkulturen zwischen Alltag und Politik, ed. F. Boll (Vienna, 1986), 175. 77. On the forms of group piece-wage arrangements, see L. Bernhard, Die Akkordarbeit in Deutschland (Leipzig, 1903), 200ff. 78. See “Reisebericht” (travel report) of a plant engineer, bridge construction, GHH, section Sterkrade, on the corresponding arrangements in another plant specializing in bridge construction, MAN Gustavsburg, dated November 30, 1921, Haniel Archives, GHH 304010/106; the division of the various time periods is also given there—applicable for GHH. Note also the external expert opinion on GHH Bridge Construction, dated January 20, 1931, dealing in particular with questions of “lost time”: to what extent were “setup time” and “rest breaks” part of such “lost time”; see Haniel Archives, GHH 40402/0, 7f. A contemporary

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literary treatment of a time and motion study can be found in W. Bredel, Maschinenfabrik N&K, 2d ed. (Berlin [GDR], 1982 [1930]), 98–102. 79. Interview with G. Ra., August 27, 1987 (see n. 54 above). 80. Plant director Dr. Wedemeyer to Paul Reusch, General Director of GHH, March 12, 1928, in Haniel Archives, GHH 4001012003/1. 81. In part, the consequence of overextending the production of components beyond the specific branch was a fiasco. When Hanomag set about developing their small passenger automobile model “5/10” in 1924–25, the electrical system was built at the plant (though not the carburetor). Within three years, the model turned out to be a failure specifically due to recurrent problems with the dynamo and starter mechanism; see interview with the former plant director K. R., March 24, 1987 (see n. 54 above). 82. D. Pfliegensdörfer, “ ‘Ich war mit Herz und Seele dabei, und so, daß mir das gar nichts ausmachte’—Bremer Flugzeugbauer im Nationalsozialismus,” 1999 3, no. 1 (1988): 60ff. 83. See also Schwarz, Kohlenpott 1931, 69; yet note references to suggestions for egalitarian forms of address within the framework of “psychotechnics,” a German alternative to “Taylorization,” starting in the mid-1920s, Schwarz, ibid., 112ff. 84. See Lüdtke, “ ‘Deutsche Qualitätsarbeit,’ ” 182f. One of the directors of the GHH, P. Schmerse, tried hard in the 1920s to restore in wage agreements the type of gradation to the advantage of “high-quality skilled workers” which he believed had been in effect before 1914; in this connection, Schmerse made a distinction between “skilled workers on piecework” and “high-quality workers”; see Haniel Archives, GHH 300193023/0, November 15, 1923. The final chapter in an investigation on apprenticeship training in large plants, which was meant to promote “optimum work procedures” and “high-quality work” and was commissioned by the Reich Committee for Economy in Industry (Reichskuratorium für Wirtschaftlichkeit, RKW), associated the “German labor ethos” (deutsche Arbeitsgesinnung) with “German quality work”; see RKW, ed., Eignung und Qualitätsarbeit (Jena, 1933), iii, 249, 273. 85. P. Bourdieu, Entwurf einer Theorie der Praxis (Frankfurt am Main, 1976), 335ff.; English translation: Outline of a Theory of Practice (Cambridge, 1977). Although Bourdieu’s approach moves toward overcoming a one-sided limitation to “interests,” i.e., optimization of benefit, the reverse side of the coin remains problematic: all forms of capital are considered convertible, and can be (ex)changed with one another. 86. See A. Lüdtke, “Cash, Coffee-Breaks, Horseplay: Eigensinn and Politics among Factory Workers in Germany circa 1900,” in Confrontation, Class Consciousness and the Labor Process, ed. M. Hanagan and C. Stephenson (New York, 1986), 65–95. On demonstrating “masculinity,” see also M. Zimmermann, “Ausbruchshoffnung. Junge Bergleute in den Dreißiger Jahren,” in “Die Jahre weiß man nicht, wo man die heute hinsetzen soll,” ed. L. Niethammer (Berlin and Bonn, 1983), 123ff.; on this approach, see likewise M. Burawoy, Manufacturing Consent (Chicago 1979); H.-J. Busch, Interaktion und innere Natur (Frankfurt am Main and New York, 1985), 223–64. 87. On the importance of “being-with-oneself” and “being-with-the-others”

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in association with worker Eigensinn, see Lüdtke, “Cash, Coffee-Breaks, Horseplay,” 80–82. 88. Regarding the spectra of synchronisms and forms of “split” orientation in the period 1933/34–1939, see Peukert, Inside Nazi Germany, 187–242. 89. “Zur Erinnerung” (memoirs of Paul Maik, born 1891 in Essen), Municipal Archives, Essen. I am grateful to Dr. Ernst Schmidt (Essen) for allowing me to examine and evaluate this text. Initial conclusions are contained in my “ ‘Formierung der Massen’ oder: Mitmachen und Hinnehmen? Alltagsgeschichte und Faschismusanalyse,” in Normalität oder Normalisierung? ed. H. Gerstenberger and D. Schmidt (Münster, 1987), 22f. 90. Ruck, Die Freien Gewerkschaften, 307f. 91. See also “Verwaltungsberichte der mechanischen Werkstätten,” Krupp, 1929–30, 1930–31ff., Historical Archives, Krupp WA 41/3–806ff. 92. Regarding aspects of “familialization” based on the example of the Viennese proletariat in the 1920s, see G. Pirlhofer and R. Sieder, “Zur Konstitution der Arbeiterfamilie im Roten Wien. Familienpolitik, Kulturreform, Alltag und Ästhetik,” in Historische Familienforschung, ed. M. Mitterauer and R. Sieder (Frankfurt am Main, 1982), 328ff., 335ff. On new housing estates in the 1920s in Germany, see A. von Saldern, “Zum Modellcharakter des Sozialen Wohnungsbaus in den 1920er Jahren,” Sozialwissenschaftliche Informationen 16 (1987): 101ff. See also Fromm, Arbeiter und Angestellte, 236ff. (regarding attitudes toward “fellow human beings,” especially one’s children and wife: approximately 40 percent of the responses corresponded to an “authoritarian” profile, while another 40 percent responded “inconsistently”). 93. See comments on cutbacks in production and large-scale layoffs in machine construction plants in Krupp, “Betriebsberichte,” Historical Archives, Krupp, WA 41/3–805 to WA 41/3–812; see likewise figures for the GHH in Haniel Archives, GHH 4080/0. 94. See, for example, a “refusal to work” by about fifty lathe operators in a machine construction plant (Mb 22) of the cast steel plant on December 23, 1924, in protest against a later 50 percent reduction in piecework quotas; Historical Archives, Krupp, WA 41/6–167. 95. B. P. Bellon, Mercedes in Peace and War: German Automobile Workers, 1903–1945 (New York, 1990), 184ff. 96. J. Mooser, Arbeiterleben in Deutschland, 171f. (1939 data for entire Reich). 97. No matter how much one emphasizes private activities, the model of a “swing from private concerns to public action and back” does not appear appropriate. This highly intriguing notion suggested by A. O. Hirschman is likewise oriented in terms of the idea criticized above, namely, that one excluded the other; see Hirschman, Shifting Involvement: Private Interest and Public Action (Princeton, 1982), 8 and passim; Passerini, Fascism in Popular Memory; D. H. Bell, Sesto San Giovanni: Workers, Culture and Politics in an Italian Town, 1880–1922 (New Brunswick, 1986); P. Johnson, Saving and Spending: The Working-Class Economy in Britain 1870–1939 (Oxford, 1985). 98. See U. Herbert, Fremdarbeiter. Politik und Praxis des “Ausländer-Einsatzes” in der Kriegswirtschaft des Dritten Reiches (Berlin and Bonn, 1985),

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122ff., 205ff., and Herbert, A History of Foreign Labor in Germany, 1880–1980: Seasonal Workers/Forced Laborers/Guest Workers (Ann Arbor, 1990), esp. 87– 119, 127–92; Projektgruppe “Fremde Arbeiter,” Fremde Arbeiter in Tübingen 1939–1945 (Tübingen, 1985), esp. 120f.; K.-J. Siegfried, Rüstungsproduktion und Zwangsarbeit im Volkswagenwerk 1939–1945 (Frankfurt am Main and New York, 1987), 78ff., 98ff.; Hamburger Stiftung für Sozialgeschichte des 20. Jahrhunderts, ed., Das Daimler-Benz-Buch: Ein Rüstungskonzern im “Tausenjährigen Reich” (Nördlingen, 1987), 436ff., 471ff., 514ff. (all on the autumn of 1944); Zimmermann, Schachtanlage und Zechenkolonie, 206ff. 99. U. Herbert, “ ‘Die guten und schlechten Zeiten’. Überlegungen zur diachronen Analyse lebensgeschichtlicher Interviews,” in Niethammer, ed., “Die Jahre weiß man nicht”, 67–96; Herbert interprets life-history interviews and does not see any “composite mixture” in the sense intended here. Rather, he argues that alongside or beneath the “structure” of fascist domination and industrialeconomic “boom,” an additional “structure” was operative among the “masses” (if not indeed dominant): the profile of life-historical experience, i.e., “private and familial” needs. Yet see the remarks (although not differentiated in social terms) in H. D. Schäfer, Das gespaltene Bewußtsein (Munich, 1981), 144ff., 159, and G. Bauer, Sprache und Sprachlosigkeit im “Dritten Reich” (Cologne, 1988). 100. On the subsequent (half-)generation born between 1900 and 1910, see D. Peukert, “Die Erwerbslosigkeit junger Arbeiter in der Weltwirtschaftskrise in Deutschland 1929–1933,” Vierteljahrschrift für Sozial- und Wirtschaftsgeschichte 72 (1985): 305–28. For stimulating ideas on the balance between conflict and internal family cohesion in a study focusing on working-class families in Turin in the first half of the twentieth century, see M. Grimaudi, Itineraires ouvriers: Espaces et groupes sociaux à Turin au début du XXème siècle (Paris, 1987). 101. See A. Lüdtke, “Hunger in der Großen Depression. Hungererfahrungen und Hungerpolitik am Ende der Weimarer Republik,” Archiv für Sozialgeschichte 27 (1987): 145–76. Aspects of how the orientation of young men is shaped in terms of generation can be found in Peukert, “Die Erwerbslosigkeit junger Arbeiter.” 102. Interview with the former Henschel worker W.D., Kassel, September 28, 1984 (see n. 54 above). He worked at Henschel from 1938 to 1940, and then once again from 1946 to 1966; until 1940 he was employed as a (semiskilled) milling cutter in locomotive construction. 103. Lüdtke, “Hunger in der Großen Depression,” 169–74. 104. See Winkler, Weg in die Katastrophe, 56ff. (workers), 19ff. (unemployed); on situations and experiences of hunger and starvation, as well as attempts by the parties to organize agitation, see my “Hunger in der Großen Depression.” 105. See Behnken, ed. Deutschlandberichte, vol. 4, 1937, 374 (March), 659f. (May). 106. Dr. Siemon (Berlin) to Dr. Steinberg (Düsseldorf), February 2, 1938, Mining Archives, Bochum, BBA 13/1920. 107. See n. 52 above as well as K. Wisotzky, Der Ruhrbergbau im Dritten Reich. Studien zur Sozialpolitik und zum sozialen Verhalten der Bergleute in den Jahren 1933 bis 1939 (Düsseldorf, 1983), 143ff., 167ff.; H. Yano, Hüttenarbeiter

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im Dritten Reich. Die Betriebsverhältnisse und soziale Lage bei der Gutehoffnungshütte Aktienverein und der Fried. Krupp AG 1936 bis 1939 (Stuttgart, 1986), 103ff.; W. F. Werner, “Bleib übrig!” Deutsche Arbeiter in der nationalsozialistischen Kriegswirtschaft (Düsseldorf, 1983), 34ff.; M.-I. Recker, Nationalsozialistische Sozialpolitik im Zweiten Weltkrieg (Munich, 1985), 26–53; on the extent of limitations on consumption already (and especially) by 1939–42, see R. J. Overy, “ ‘Blitzkriegswirtschaft’? Finanzpolitik, Lebensstandard und Arbeitseinsatz in Deutschland 1939–1942,” Vierteljahrshefte für Zeitgeschichte 36 (1988): 395ff. On the connection between labor and incomes policy and the crisis in the system of fascist rule, see T. Mason, Sozialpolitik im Dritten Reich (Opladen, 1977), esp. 269–99. 108. See, in particular, V. L. Lidtke, The Alternative Culture: Socialist Labor in Imperial Germany (Oxford and New York, 1985), and for a local case (i.e., characteristics and limits of local organizing in the framework of the SPD), A. von Saldern, Auf dem Weg zum Arbeiter-Reformismus. Parteialltag in sozialdemokratischer Provinz, Göttingen (1870–1920) (Frankfurt am Main, 1984). 109. Moore, Injustice, esp. 77ff., 458ff; the suggestiveness of the general thesis is more important here than the analysis of an individual case (such as in Germany). 110. On class-transcending modes of communication, see Schäfer, Das gespaltene Bewußtsein, and Bauer, Sprache und Sprachlosigkeit; on the following, see also P. Schirmbeck, Adel der Arbeit (Marburg, 1984), 35ff., 51ff. 111. On the example of the charcoal-processing plant HIAG in the village of Bodenfelde on the upper Weser River, see L. Hoffmann, U. Neumann, and W. Schäfer, Zwischen Feld und Fabrik (Göttingen, 1986), 59–60; see Freitag, Spenge, 424–25. 112. See Behnken, ed., Deutschlandberichte, vol. 5. 1938, 173f., 176; Wisotzky, Der Ruhrbergbau im Dritten Reich, 182ff.; he comes to a negative conclusion regarding increases in productivity, and argues that the DAF had in any event been “kicking at an open door” in the case of management; similarly, Yano, Hüttenarbeiter im Dritten Reich, 123ff. 113. On the “planning” of experiences determined in their content in the course of “habitualized competition” in bourgeois society, see H. Gerstenberger, “Alltagsforschung und Faschismustheorie,” in Gerstenberger and Schmidt, eds., Normalität oder Normalisierung? 42ff. In my view, this thesis operates with an “economistically” contracted conception of interest and links that with an interpretation of “habitus” (see the Glossary) which presupposes a closed functional context. Such a perspective is disinterested in discontinuities, fractures, and points of friction in respect to content—features that condition the very possibility for nonuniform change and upheaval.

8 ZEROING IN ON CHANGE IN SEARCH OF POPULAR EXPERIENCE IN THE INDUSTRIAL PROVINCE IN THE G E R M A N D E M O C R A T I C R E P U B L I C* Lutz Niethammer

Sources of Remembrance

A

T THE BEGINNING of 1987, I was granted permission by the authorities to conduct life-history interviews in three industrial regions in the German Democratic Republic.1 Taking previous research we conducted in the Ruhr2 as a point of departure, our interest was focused in particular on earlier experiences of people and on the social culture that had arisen among the working class under transformed conditions in the postwar period. However, since the concept of “worker” in the GDR3 is even more fluid and amorphous than it is in West Germany when applied in longitudinal biographical inquiry, our interviews, totaling 150 cases, cast light into a broad array of social domains. About half of the fathers of interviewees were workers, and an even greater number had completed specialized training as skilled workers; yet only in the case of a third had their last occupation been that of a worker, foreman, or master workman in industry. Naturally, this aspect * The German title, “Annäherung an den Wandel” (coming closer to change), alludes to the slogan Wandel durch Annäherung (change through coming closer, gradual convergence) that was a watchword of the new Ostpolitik inaugurated by Willi Brandt as chancellor in the late 1960s. The East German adjective volkseigen, rendered here simply as “popular,” had a central denotation in GDR parlance: “belonging to the people,” that is, “nationally owned” (ergo “state-owned”), and was applied to many enterprises; its connotation “characteristic of the people” is played on here, in the sense of “popular and peculiar to the GDR population.”—TRANS.

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in the profile of our respondent group is not intended to be representative; nonetheless, it is probably quite typical for the older generation of the industrial population in the [former] GDR. Our interest in the prerequisites of continuity of the postwar period led us to seek out older individuals; the group that was eventually assembled consisted of an approximately equal number of men and women, of whom roughly half were born before the end of World War I, and most of the rest during the 1920s.4 Interviews were conducted in the spring and summer of 1987 by Dorothee Wierling, Alexander von Plato, and myself. Our technique was, first of all, always to request a life-history narrative in a form chosen by the respondent; later, we attempted to extend and broaden the report, generally by direct questioning of the interviewee on all aspects of his/her life, public, professional, and private. As a rule, we carried out these interviews alone (in a fifth of the sessions, interested GDR historians were also present). All conversations were recorded on tape cassettes and taken out of the GDR preserving the strict anonymity of the respondents, a condition we had guaranteed them. A survey of this magnitude would have been an unusual undertaking for any project in oral history; conducting it in the GDR at that particular juncture created a minor sensation. Previously, it had not been possible for West German researchers to put together and probe such a complex body of biographical experience in East Germany. Even scholars from other countries, who for several years had enjoyed more favorable opportunities for doing research there,5 had had no chance to amass such a documentation of orally transmitted materials. Life-history interviewing among the population, as a subfield of contemporary history influenced by ethnology, is itself still in its infancy in the GDR, after long skepticism about the advisability of such an approach.6 Historians there cite different reasons for such reservations: oral history is supposedly a very expensive enterprise, its findings tend to be tentative, raising new questions rather than providing secure answers, and here, too, the available (quantitative) capacities of the GDR are relatively small (the total population being roughly equal to the state of North Rhine–Westphalia plus Hamburg). There is a quite highly developed and refined system of reporting and information-gathering in most institutions and organizations in the GDR, whose job it is to replace, in a bureaucratic and internal way, many of the information functions of the public arena in Western countries. Why should a historian who has access to these sources go out and ask the people themselves—when he already knows so much about them from the files? The fact that the dimension of subjective reality is lost in the process of bureaucratic reporting is of negligible importance for the predominant form of historiography in the GDR; for many years, historians there have been principally concerned with the constraints of eco-

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nomic forces, and the actions of the political leadership. Finally, political misgivings were also voiced: in a state shaped by the “vanguard of the most progressive forces,” any situation where residual consciousness lying dormant in the population publicly confronted itself could prove counterproductive. In the meantime, insight there has grown about the wisdom of the counterarguments: more now recognize that objectivism paralyzes individual creativity, concealment of experience generates fictive, unreal disputes, and the absence of a public sphere undermines credibility. Since the 1970s, it has become possible in the GDR to communicate personal experience in the field of fiction.7 Probably treading in the path of the tradition of socialist documentary literature, the interview focusing on personal memories emerged into the arena of public awareness and discourse as a device probing continuity and the perception of contradiction, as evidence and advocacy of an otherwise increasingly dissocialized self-perception by the individual.8 Though we remain hopeful that findings from our investigation will also reach readers in the GDR in some not too distant future, a study like our own, coming as it does from the “outside,” cannot have a primary meaning similar to that of past attempts in the GDR to communicate historical experience proceeding from accepted practices in literature. So why engage in such research at all, one might ask, given the various drawbacks entailed: the chance nature of respondent selection, the selectivity of personal memory, and the accidental character of interaction between East and West Germans in the GDR? Moreover, such inquiry confounds matters, opening up a whole slew of broader questions to whose solution case studies can never make more than a modest contribution. The first reason has to do with external perceptions of the GDR: these are often so stereotyped they remain blind to the realities of life of the population in the GDR, their basic experiences and actual latitude for action; and this suppresses the fact that Germans on both sides of the divide share a fund of quite comparable formative experiences. The upshot is that communication fails to get off the ground, or never even reaches the point where it could. Perhaps, we would argue, it is possible to arrive at more complex images and differentiated insights into the constraints and potentials of GDR history by following another tack: a perspective that actively includes persons who had direct personal experience of that particular stream of German continuity which flowed on into the GDR. Such images and insights can serve to make everyday dialogue more worthwhile in the context of a situation where communication, externally, is being made ever easier. If our intention to facilitate communication by rendering the perception of contemporary history more differentiated and concrete is to avoid the risk of getting bogged down in remote detail, spadework must delve into the sources of the history of

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everyday life and experience, and into basic questions in GDR history, which we must try to grasp with greater exactitude. By way of illustration, I would like to examine at least three such fundamental open questions that are crucial to an internal social history of the GDR. In both East and West, the most striking gap in historiography on the GDR is between collections of data and structural descriptions9 that are oriented along demographic-economic (and increasingly also sociographic) lines, on the one hand, and a tentative analysis and description of the decisions made by the political leadership there from the perspective of political science, on the other.10 The entire sphere of social mediation and experience has been little researched, although we can note the beginnings of social-historical investigation and monographs attempting to open a window on this unmapped terrain.11 Research in the West, where interest in contemporary social history developed earlier on, lacks primary sources; occasionally, scholars in the GDR are faced with the same problem. But there is a particularly sore lack of methodological experience there, and of productive discourse transcending the internal knowledge and programmatic perspectives of the leadership elite. Thus, for example, little is known about elements of continuity and change in political and social culture extending on down through the Third Reich—and this in a society that defines its very legitimacy on the basis of the continuity of an alternative culture. Darkness still enshrouds the social and experiential history of the waves of migration in the 1940s and 1950s, when the territory of the GDR lost almost one-fourth of its original inhabitants and absorbed more refugees and expellees than any other occupation zone relative to its population. Did that uprooted and relocated segment of the population serve as a safety valve to vent pressures for social revolution, and as a vast human resource reservoir for the “red economic miracle”? There is also a crying need for a social history of women in this part of Europe: the GDR is second only to Belorussia in the comparative number of its females, and is governed by an overwhelming male power elite.12 Similarly, it is necessary to develop a comprehensive evaluation of the experience of processes of upward and downward mobility in that part of Germany which has been most markedly characterized by social mobility in the postwar era. Such previously ignored basic questions in a social history of the GDR should guide the orientation of investigations which seek to comprehend the individual life history, place it in its network of social relations, and work out its typical experiences, rhythms, and relations with other types. Likewise, that orientation will be molded by questions that have already been partially researched, such as the construction of socialist industry,13 the collectivization of the self-employed, and dimensions of political sociology and international relations. Only in such an interplay of perspectives can work on individual life histories reveal features marking the

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characteristic configuration of experience in the GDR, raising questions that can in turn stimulate further historical research and political discourse. Yet in the concrete work of evaluating such life histories, these broader questions remain on an analytical back burner, as it were, a kind of set of associations held in reserve. Comprehension begins with the individual case, questioning what one does not understand, that is, the sense of puzzlement the investigator feels when confronted with some element that is highly suggestive, significant yet obscure:* a sentence, a basic theme, a trauma, a constellation that taxes and challenges the previous knowledge of the interpreter, who then proposes hypotheses which must be examined in the light of the text of the entire life history. Such work discloses a deep structure of new relations and more general insights, whose specificity and generality can be more tightly defined and closely checked by ethnographic and group-biographical approaches. Utilizing this fruitful procedure from oral history, insofar as it deals with life history materials, our intention here is to present a preliminary, exploratory report centering on a single investigative dimension drawn from one of the three study areas of our field investigation, and illustrated in each case by one abbreviated example. The research is based on thirtysix interviews with a constructed special group: largely indigenous informants in and around the city of Karl-Marx-Stadt, the former Chemnitz.14 The residual leading question in regard to this group is: if so many migrated to the West during the period after the war, why did the majority stay on? In other words, interest here centers on the type, scope, and dynamics of cohesion in GDR society. An attempt will be made to calibrate this question, making it more specific and precise by concentrating on an especially sedentary special group, pointing out further ramifications and opening up perspectives. The possible value of oral history lies specifically in such an approach, rather than in quantifiable findings.

Confronting the Puzzle of Pithy Obscurity: The Other Self Ludwig Haber seemed to me like a veritable godsend who could save our project. At the beginning of such a survey, an investigator from the West is ensnared in the web of his own preconceptions about the GDR. My expectations were that our interviewees in the GDR would, in the main, be party comrades who had proven their worth and mettle in the anti* The formula Irritation prägnanter Unverständlichkeit—a sense of puzzlement on the part of the investigator when confronted with highly suggestive yet stubbornly obscure statements by informants—is a key methodological concept in the author’s approach.— TRANS.

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fascist struggle. But it turned out that only 40 percent of our interviewees were contacted via the party section heads in factories and union officials; we were allowed and indeed had to look for the rest on our own. After we had completed our hundredth interview, none of our respondents corresponded to the expected stereotype of the GDR; I started to feel a little nervous, since no one would believe that the GDR consisted of nothing but former members of Hitler Youth, nonpolitical individuals, and depoliticized Social Democrats. The antifascist impetus of the leadership elite in the GDR was, after all, not based on a mere fiction, and Erich Honecker was still running the state. The discovery that the stratum of veteran Communists who had remained politically active was extremely thin and hardly noticeable at grass roots level was quite impressive in itself.15 Ludwig Haber provided us with an additional lesson. Haber had spent ten years behind bars during the Third Reich, and he was pushed by his party, quite against his will, into an involvement in historical work after being pensioned, because, he commented, there were but few people able to tell stories as he could about the antifascist struggle. Of course, there were certainly still comrades who had direct experience of that struggle, but the Committee of Antifascist Resistance Fighters could no longer make use of their services as Zeitzeugen—witnesses of the events of the time—since their memories were erroneous. It was argued that they sometimes remembered stories they had not experienced themselves; or they told about things they had indeed had direct experience of, but which did not accord with historical truth. Their perspective, shackled as a result of the conspiratorial conditions of the struggle, lacked breadth, had not encompassed the broader dimensions. Let us look at this argument: what the SED functionary expects of a direct witness of the antifascist resistance struggle is that he or she personally attest to and authenticate a total and embracing history—one which no person had experienced as such. An approach along these lines was tantamount to dissolving individuality into a history of the movement as it can be interpreted only by its leadership. This demand upon the capacities of Zeitzeugen is so great that it renders the testimony of most participants invalid. Just how great, Herr Haber knew quite well from his own experience. Since the age of fourteen, Haber had been a Communist functionary; after liberation from imprisonment in 1945, he went on to climb to the highest rungs of the party. But in 1953, he was caught up in the maelstrom of the last Stalinist purge (the so-called Slansky trials) and in power struggles in the top echelons of the SED16 and was banished from the center of power. Yet Haber was not completely discredited; he was compensated by being given a university lectureship, and was rehabilitated after one year, although he did not regain his former post. The academic position was a different kind of gratification for this highly gifted skilled

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worker, since it was linked with his own private studies while in prison: he had learned about German classical literature from a fellow prisoner, a former KPD Reichstag deputy, and was taught advanced mathematics by a professional counterfeiter. The two years he spent at the party college after the war had helped to bring some systematic order into these foundations laid behind bars. He later went on to study at the university, completing a Ph.D., and finally advanced to the post of professor. His success at the university was a counterweight to his failure in politics. Here at the university, and among local party comrades, he found, by the sheer force of his personality,17 the respect that had been called into question in higher party circles. Speaking about the year between his fall from grace and rehabilitation, he noted: “In actual fact, they treated me as if I were still the man I was.” What had brought about this split of his personality into two selves that were evidently equal, but nonetheless evaluated in contradictory fashion? One supposed reason behind Haber’s departure from the power elite that is mentioned was the rediscovery of his Gestapo file: it contained a report that Haber had known a moment of weakness and yielded to the enemy, revealing the names of some of his associates. Haber does not deny that the file can indeed be interpreted in that way, yet contends in self-defense that under interrogation he disclosed only the names of those persons who were already known to the Gestapo at this point in time— the result of a complicated process that had led to the exposure of the regional leadership of the Communist youth association. He had reported his recollection of the events in a petition submitted to the party control commission, but the commission had initially given more credence to the Gestapo files—at least as long as he held his official post. After he left his position and Stalin died and a year had passed since the June 17, 1953, uprising, the committee subsequently accepted his version of the events and he was reinstated. Haber himself is quite aware that to an outside third party, both versions are equally convincing. He had often sat as a member of similar commissions and made his decision, based on what the files contained— though “trust is good, control is better” (as Lenin said). In this case, however, the former judge was in the pitiful situation of being himself in the dock, and the only evidence he could muster against his opponents today—who were relying on the files of his former adversaries—was his memory. Moreover, his present-day adversaries were in fact the highest offices in his own party. But without the party his identity would lose all meaning: because of the party, he had spent his youth behind bars; the party had expanded his horizon and given him the chance for responsibility. Indeed, even his innermost private emotions had been in harmony with the pulse beat of the party back in 1945, when, as the delegate of

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Communist youth, he had fallen in love at his first political meeting with his female counterpart, the delegate from the SPD; and then, a bit later on that same year, when those two parties were joined in wedlock and merged into the SED, he had married that daughter of an émigré highlevel functionary of the SPD. This internal fusion with a party that subsequently distanced itself from him generated a psychological split—one that also developed into two separate social realities. He believes he knows who he really was, and those who see him impartially take him to be that person. But his alter ego, the party, changed that actuality into a hypothetical mode (“as if I were still the man”) during the year between his political fall from grace and the restoration of his honor. He would not have been able to bear that split very long. However, the party had fused his life even more closely with its line: based on trust and against the evidence of the files, it had restored his identity and made it possible for him to pursue a second career as an intellectual. Though that was of less significance politically, for him it had almost equal importance, and offered him the stage of a new career on which he was able once again to demonstrate his unusual gifts. It was thus not surprising that Haber, a mathematician and philosopher, was pushed against his will into historical work within the Association of the Victims of Nazi Persecution—and thus into the job of official representation of antifascism. After all, his personality communicated a requisite aura of suffering, and his memory was impeccably correct. The other interviewee in this local group of respondents who had worked for a long time as a party functionary was evidently not so certain about this process of fusion. And she had gaps in her memory. Yet that interviewee too said something puzzling that astonished me, riddled as it was with contradiction and meaning: “My father wasn’t so political; he was practical (real).”* After two decades of political activity in real, “already existing socialism,”† Pia Diemer makes a distinction here worth exploring. Almost eighty years of age, she agreed to be interviewed out of a sense of duty, because she had served as factory party secretary and later as personnel head in a state-owned (volkseigen) plant where we conducted interviews. Yet she was not happy about being interviewed. Diemer repeatedly interjected avowals of her loyalty to the state—as if that loyalty were under attack—and added all kinds of gratuitous negative observations about * Real here means something like “practically minded,” “realistic,” but has an additional connotation due to its political denotation in GDR discourse, and will be rendered below as real.—TRANS. † Real existierender Sozialismus, the official term for the system in GDR nomenclature—TRANS.

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the Federal Republic, though she had never been there herself. And she refused to talk about her children—they had become very high-placed persons, and thus something secret. Yet despite her diffidence and aggressive remarks, she is quite evidently a pleasant old lady. Everyone commented to me what a good coworker she is; in particular, they said, Diemer is a person to whom you can pour out your heart, confiding your innermost thoughts and feelings. In the meanwhile, our conversation picks up momentum, a spirited discussion develops, touching especially on her youth. She was an only child, of course from a working-class family, but her parents were something special: they were theater people! Her father was a stagehand, her mother worked with props, and they had connections with various different theater companies, so that she traveled around a lot as a child, and finally even got to Berlin. Of course, in between she also spent a good deal of time alone with an aunt in Saxony. But the theater was her world, and planted a lifelong desire deep inside her for classical culture and the better (cultural) things in life—until at a later age Diemer’s husband put an end to their concertgoing by developing a nervous cough, and she had to switch to listening to phonograph records. By contrast, her practical life was more modest. At the beginning of the 1930s, the family lived in a garden house in Berlin. She was practicalminded and hardworking, learned shorthand and typing, and landed a job in the office of a cigarette wholesaling firm. She describes the boss, whom she evidently had a liking for, as a genial opportunist, a man who accommodated to the situation both before and after 1933 and always had a good word for others—even if they had differing views. She was married in 1935, but only in a civil ceremony, since both she and her husband had by then left the church. He was a weaver by trade, to put it more precisely, a tenant living at her aunt’s place who had turned out to be a theater buff (“That was our life!”). They were ambitious and managed to get an apartment in what was at the time a new building, where they still live today. She became a housewife and the mother of three children, the youngest of which was born (of all times!) in the spring of 1945—“because we had a good marriage,” she remarks in reply to my startled question as to why precisely then. Her husband had not had to serve in combat; fortunately, he had been conscripted to work locally in an armaments factory. She cannot remember what he did there. “As a young woman, I just wasn’t interested in that.” In any case, he was no longer employed in weaving. But come 1945, he was immediately at work helping in the reconstruction of the economy, and landed a post in the local administration office; he soon joined the SED and became a local economic functionary. In 1947 she followed his example, joining the party and the trade union. Right at the very first meeting, she became actively involved in the Demo-

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cratic Women’s League (DFD), which at that time had “four or five hundred members” in her town. A friend of Diemer’s in the DFD pointed out that her mother, who had been living with them since 1945, could also pitch in and take care of the children. So starting in 1947, she went back to work, first as a technical worker in a large industrial firm; she later shifted to a job as a typist there in the party office. And then came a crucial turning point in her life. In the mid-1950s, she uncovered a conspiracy of “direct enemies of the state”—namely, her bosses in the plant. They had passed on information to a secret British transmitter about how socialism could be sabotaged, for which they were later “put behind bars for many years.” She said she had had “good connections” and “intuition: that fellow means well, that one’s up to no good.” After this demonstrative proof of her vigilance, she was appointed deputy party secretary at the plant. A year later, she was made plant party secretary at a factory staffed mainly by women, where the number of party members on the work force (though that proportion was very low) had reached one hundred, qualifying the plant for a full-time party secretary. At this point, however, she had not as yet even attended a political training course. June 17, 1953, had been especially important for Diemer because “I had never been together with workers, except for my father-inlaw, my father, that sort of thing. That was quite an experience for me.” But this statement is deceptive for someone from the West: her experience of the uprising consisted in the fact that nothing happened. The protest never got as far as their plant; in fact, the work force there organized a factory security plan to protect the premises. Given such an unusual and apparently completely unprepared path (even in terms of class experience) leading to work in politics—a domain where she was, after all, professionally active for two decades—there is some justification in wondering whether her father had been a political person. It is at this point that she makes the comment quoted earlier, and then continues: My father wasn’t so political, he was real. He was even so real that when Hitler gave the workers, I mean, when the people got work, well, he admired that. But later all that fell apart; everything fell apart ‘cause of the behavior of those Nazis. Somebody betrayed him and so he had to leave there.

If I understand her correctly, “all that” fell apart quite late—to be precise, right at the end of the war. In 1944, her father had become supervisor of a provincial theater in Thuringia, and figured that he could survive quite well in that position. But then a fellow worker, someone he had earlier promoted, denounced him, saying that the job he held was hardly an appropriate one in such trying times. So he was recruited into the Home Guard (Volkssturm), where he subsequently fell ill and died. Politics makes itself felt via a denunciation, claiming innocent victims. As long as things are going well, politics is not comprehended as such; rather it is

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made anonymous with passive structures. By contrast, real here does not signify something completely different from politics—but rather a shift in perspective, an instinct for turning a situation to good use, or for sensing the risk present in a given set of circumstances, a kind of gumption. For example, real is the political consensus as recognition of social-political achievements—a consensus which collapsed when “all that” fell apart. But being real also means having a sure instinct, such as being prudent enough to refrain from getting actively involved, even in politics that one can admire. Later on, she also calls her father-in-law a “very real person,” because he advised his son (her brother-in-law) against volunteering for the military; yet he went anyhow, and was killed in action near Stalingrad. So real entails a feeling for what reality demands in the given situation. Is Pia Diemer real—or someone political? That is hard to say: in her work since the 1950s, a distinction of that kind was apparently concealed. Her idealism furnished the bridge, an idealism that had been nurtured in her early wish to acquire a higher level of culture. Diemer comments that it was the first lectures she heard after the war, when she had become active working in the schools and had organized a zither ensemble for Erzgebirge folk and labor songs, which provided her initial contact with Marxism and Lenin: “so that things became a bit [more] lucid in my mind.” She is proud of the fact that her party meetings later on in the plant were popular because people felt they learned something there. This is also confirmed in interviews with others from the same factory, even her opponents. She was considered to be honest, her meetings were at a high level, kept brief, and what is even more important: you could go to Diemer and say what was on your mind, talk about marriage troubles, problems with housing, your superiors, all kinds of private matters—and everyone felt that what was said never went beyond that room. A party secretary at the plant had a proxy role: to substitute for the pastor—and was given recognition, regarded as a source of information about grass roots opinion among the workers to the extent that he or she fulfilled that quasi-pastoral function. A party secretary had to solve everyday problems and awaken understanding among the workers for what was being demanded of them—the quieter and more personal the better.18 You were politically effective to the extent you were real. After her problematic start, Pia Diemer evidently was able to do precisely that. She had understood that she had to win people’s “confidence,” and that the way to do this was via the reality of private affairs. That is why she is proud that coworkers poured out their heart to her, and that she represented the party with maternal loyalty. As party secretary, she was given the pay of a good worker on piece wages. As a personnel head later on, she earned 110 marks a month less, which represented

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a big cut in income at the time in the GDR. But she nonetheless agreed to take on that job in the wake of a restructuring of the plant that left it with fewer than the required minimum number of party members for a fulltime party secretary, and she stayed on a volunteer basis as party secretary as well. “Because I had this idea that my workers shouldn’t say ‘she’s just doing it for the money,’ I continued on in the job, even for less pay.” Within an organically evolved field of personal ties, that amounted to a political gesture, because “her workers”—almost all female—were real, and they certainly would not have stayed on at their same job for less money. Pia Diemer is pleased when we finally finish the interview; she asks to be spared a second one. Evidently we have probed into the mixed “patchwork” of real life (reale Gemengelagen) in her biography that she was not prepared to discuss in this political conversation with an interviewer from West Germany. For that reason, she thinks she ought to correct something and asks me to switch on the tape recorder again. Since this is the only time that an interviewee ever expressly asked me to take something down for the record, I would like to report her comment verbatim: Professor, I hope you’ve understood from my discussion that I’m sorry for the people in West Germany because they have to live under such conditions there. Things are nicer here, even if people always say that we don’t have any freedom. Yes, OK, that’s it.

Reference Structures of Experience: On Revolutionary Strength For many in his industrial village, Siegfried Homann remains the veritable embodiment of the human face of “already existing socialism.” A vigorous man from Saxony, stocky, lively, friendly, and hardworking, he was the son of the leading Social Democratic functionary in town—a father who advised his son, soon after his return home from the war in 1945, to join the KPD so that he would be on the “right side” when the two parties were unified.19 Siegfried did not get involved in a political career; instead, he returned to the biggest plant in town as a textile worker. He describes the factory as “one big family,” consisting of a few men and many women, most of whom worked at home on a cottageindustrial basis. The plant boss was a capable businessman who had worked for the Wehrmacht during the Third Reich and joined the (Nazi) party—but who had kept Marx’s Das Kapital in his desk drawer just in case, in order to prepare himself for the future. In the hard times after 1945, he worked together with the local Communist mayor and helped secure provisions

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for the local inhabitants by means of all kinds of barter deals. The factory continued to operate. In 1949, one of those deals was used against him, and he was convicted and sent to jail for black marketeering. Soon after his release, the factory boss piled his family and essential belongings onto a truck one night and headed west. Siegfried Homann, who had been entrusted with union functions in the plant since 1948, then took over production management under the supervision of a trustee.20 He remained head of production during all the stages of plant expansion, “nationalization” (Volkseigenwerdung), the incorporation of other smaller textile factories whose owners had retired or fled to the West, the conversion from cottage-industrial to industrial production, and its automatization. The plant grew into a combine enjoying a monopoly in its field in the GDR. At the age of sixty he fell ill, had to switch to a less important post, and was then retired four years later with a disability pension. Let’s put it quite honestly. It took a lot of strength, what we had to do. . . . Nowadays, the people who run plants and stuff like that, they’re college graduates. In practical terms, we just laid the foundations. But it was pretty darn interesting. And it took a whole lot of your strength and energy, and hurt too. You just had to accomplish a lot of things with strength and brawn. It’s simply the reward of practice. You see, I learned things in this plant. . . . OK, well, I don’t have the academic prerequisites, see, I’m just a normal guy. But the specialists upstairs, the ones I was accountable to, they were all university grads. The ones on top, they all had a college education. ’Cept the ones down at the bottom, yeah, that was our job, we old-timers here. So let’s be honest about it: it was harder for us, because we didn’t have the academic background. . . . And when you work, say ten or twelve hours a day, and you don’t even come back home, because in the Erzgebirge, like you’d be stuck up there during the winter, see. New machines—in practical terms, I helped make the transition from manual machinery to motor-driven machines. Everything was done by hand, and I just helped in developing motordriven machines; they’re still standing right over there. That was the first path we took, and it brought the whole revolution—OK, let’s call it that. And I also got the first Japanese machines too. And then we, uh, that’s a revolution which we just, uh. . . . That requires lots and lots of muscle and moxie and takes time.

Interviewer: What do you feel made the most excessive demands on your abilities? Well, that was the matter of time. Time and the strength to implement the new technology. That’s pretty darn hard. That’s what I always say, when I took over the plant in ’49, sure, I’d also gotten people from the town council,

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good people, who were employed directly as managers, but I was responsible for the whole production operation. And it’s hard to say: hey, listen, we’re gonna take down the old owner’s sign and put up one that says “state enterprise” [VEB]. That job takes an hour. Just an hour. But then to work things out with the people inside, like so they understand, and the feeling “owned by the people” [volkseigen]—now we can just take what we need— after all, it’s owned by the people! So first you had to say: hold on there a second, buddy! Things are gonna continue just like before, it can’t be any different than it was before, whether the name of the owner on the sign was Müller or Meier—now we simply have another managing director. And he’s employed just the same way as us, see, he’s in the same boat. And then there was the new technology and all that. Those were all old people working in the plant, some of them my age, together with me. All those women I’d known since we were together at school, and so on. And the first thing you gotta say is: watch out there, buddy, that’s not the way, no longer the way to do things. I’m adding new machines now. And all that cost a lot of strength. I arranged all that, switching from manual to motor-driven machinery; we bought entire machine systems. New machines, some of them are still being used, I bought them in Romania. That was strange. The machine factory down the road, they couldn’t manage to produce the machine we needed. The Romanians were bringing out a new machine. We heard that and went on down to Romania and bought the thing. You see, all that takes strength. And to stand up in public, and all that—it took a lot of strength. And my nerves simply weren’t strong enough. That was the direction I took. But let me tell you: it was a beautiful time. A beautiful time, let me say that in all honesty. You had your responsibilities. I told all my children that, and all of them, even if they didn’t become plant managers, they all have their responsibilities. It’s a great feeling, I can recommend it to everyone. Well, my youngest, he doesn’t feel like doing something extra.

The youngest son he is referring to, a “latecomer,” is not yet thirty, and is well aware of the costs paid by the generation of those who built the country; he can no longer comprehend the path they took and their commitment. For Siegfried Homann, this road was a consuming fulfillment. The path was not marked out for him; rather, he was thrust onto it as one of the few young men in this large plant at a point in time when its owner saw no future and ran off and left it. Suddenly it was his job, a union man, to defend plant discipline against the misconception rife among workers that property “owned by the people” belonged to everyone. He had to assume technical responsibility and a portion of the responsibility of management in a growing enterprise. The fact that he takes on such responsibility is the first revolution, but Siegfried doesn’t mention that specifically (“things are gonna continue just like before . . . now we simply

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have another managing director”). What he does talk about in quite specific terms is the second industrial revolution: where step by step, he helps push through the transition from cottage-industrial to industrial production. This adventure is both technological and organizational, a task for which he has to develop all his powers of comprehension. But it also involves a new relationship with his old schoolmates, women whose accustomed world of domestic poverty he proceeds to shatter with his machines—women he wants to win over to a better, industrial-based mode of life. He is on friendly terms with everyone, and lives together with the other workers in a three-room flat in an old workers’ housing project. He cannot and will not avoid these tensions by creating a distance; his commitment on behalf of the revolution demands and develops his strength, consuming it in the process. One need only note the numerous repetitions of that leitmotiv in this exemplary summing up of experience from the generation of those who built the country in order to gauge the amount of energy that was expended. There can be no repetition of this personal experience, which was also, and equally, a “beautiful feeling.” Now all the tasks are centralized, specialized, professionalized, and the possibility to experience responsibility is vanishing, as is the distance between one’s origin and function. The young workers already sense that they will never be able to experience that “beautiful feeling” of the first generation of builders—and are therefore afraid to expend the kind of strength their fathers once invested. That’s why you can’t let the old veteran fighters go—people for whom progress is still something natural and obvious, and who can still talk to the workers at the machines, because they share their experience. I’ve wanted for a long time to stop working. Hey Siegfried, c’mon, you’ll get another guy to help, just stay on. We can’t do without your skills—that’s how it was. It took a whole lot of strength and energy. What that did to me was so, uh, I already got my first signs of a heart attack back in ’64.

Some Interim Observations The first two examples involved semantic operations with texts of experience and reflection. Guided by our irritation—not in the face of small mistakes, but due to our inability as interpreters to comprehend when confronted with the content of experiences formulated in what was clearly a careful manner by the interviewees and as a result of unaccustomed conceptual classifications—our task was semantic: to decode the latent meaning of the text, its formal signals and references, utilizing the information content of the total text of the interview and other available

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knowledge. One could also express it in the maxim: how much (pre)history does the text require in order to communicate its message? In the following section, interpretation takes an opposite avenue: it is concerned with narrative molecules of memory which inevitably appear in a life history whenever the experience of new things or emotionally powerful experiences are involved. As a rule, these experiences are reported in a completely comprehensible manner, in scenic or anecdotal form, because their perception exceeded what was previously expected, and because such experiences prepared the ground for future conceptual reducibility (and thus forgettability). One must picture these scenes as nodes or branchings on memory’s traces, which can repeatedly be depicted as stories and, if the experience was traumatic, resurface and must be retold again and again. These stories, consequently, are generally situated in the personal stored experience of the individual and often in the realm of private matters; occasionally they may even emerge in a broken form straight from the domain of the intimate. Since they tend to precede the meaningful processing of memory, giving it structure rather than being subject to its shaping, they belong to the very bedrock of memory. For that reason, the interpretive maxim here should be formulated in the opposite way: how much implication of history (namely, contexture of conditions and meaningfulness) does the private anecdote contain?21 One should bear in mind, though, that the concept of “anecdote” as used here is a purely formal one, because only on rare occasion do German anecdotes and the dramas of private life have humorous elements—least of all in the (extreme) case I have chosen to present here. In the following example, which explores the biographical dimension in the situation of a couple preceding from diametrically opposed positions, both maxims of interpretation—how much prehistory do we need for understanding? how much history is implicated?—are interwoven in order to reach a point of departure for group-specific controls.

Traumatic Traces on the Tracks of Memory: Tests of Endurance Most of our respondents not only had the raw data of their biography on tap in memory, but also narrated these data in a specific form, namely, separated according to areas of life and ordered into several chronological columns one after the other. In the case of Sieglinde Erger, there is a difference. She begins with her husband’s death when she was twentyfour, and the birth of her daughter; she mentions her son-in-law and her grandchildren. She then refers to the three apartments she has lived in—in

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the first one, that of her parents, she spent forty-one years—and mentions her present rather restricted but still pleasant circumstances. Sieglinde Erger goes on to point out that she was in a psychiatric clinic seven times: “I had schizophrenia.”22 That brings her to her training as an industrial clerk at the age of forty-eight—a challenge that was difficult but financially worthwhile. And she ends with her early retirement at the age of fifty-nine, after cardiac and circulatory disorders and rheumatism compounded her psychiatric illness. Then she talks about a visit to her brother in West Germany and finishes by stating that she is happy to live in the GDR, because the West in her eyes is too uncertain, dangerous, and expensive. After that, she asks me: “What else should I tell about?” I have many questions, and in the course of a longer conversation, it becomes apparent that Sieglinde Erger also has the data of her biography and relatives, along with many recollections, stored in her mind. Yet in her memory, traumatic events in which her individual prospects for the future were seized hold of, redirected, and narrowed by external factors are much more important than the conventional stringing together of such data. These turning points bunch together in the extreme case, pointing to preconditions in whose light they become comprehensible. In other words: her life history links up with strands of more general history, increasing one’s awareness for the individual dimensions of the war’s consequences. The war widow is able to seal off her trauma in the support structures of everyday life within the family and her circle of coworkers, but remains unable to overcome that trauma. In times of crisis, it erupts once again, crystallizing in bouts of mental derangement that plunge her into loneliness and make her dependent on the psychiatric clinic. There may also be a certain proclivity involved here,23 but predispositions do not always develop into full-blown problems. The following section focuses on the share of social factors in her crises. During the Great Depression, the bottom was literally swept out from under Erger’s family, so concerned with its standing and good name. Her father, a coach driver from a Social Democratic background, lost his job and was unable to find new employment until 1938. Her mother, strict and religious, tries to keep the family of five above water by taking in work at home. One of her brothers is able to do an apprenticeship; the other, without any vocational training, enlists in the SS. She has to go straight from school into work at a factory, but initially can find only short-term jobs, and is often unemployed. Shortly before the war, things stabilize once again: her father finds work, her brother switches from the SS to the Wehrmacht, and she finds an office job in a large factory, where she learns shorthand and typing and falls in love with a designer eleven years her senior, a man who has climbed his way up the ladder from a

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mechanic to an engineer, and manages to avoid military service until 1943. He is athletic, a competent worker from a left-wing background, like her father; the two enjoy going boating and camping together. I was pregnant and so we wanted to get married Christmas 1943. But then a letter came saying he couldn’t come, he was being called to the front. . . . He had all the necessary documents for marriage ready, at Christmas. And then January 9, 1944, his company commander wrote that he had had a fatal automobile accident in Italy. Afterward I received the official notification, and the documents for getting married were there too. So after that, on May 18, 1944, I was married here at the town hall, with a sabre and steel helmet. . . . That was on the desk next to the official. . . . In order that my daughter would not be illegitimate when she was born. And so I’d also be able to get a widow’s pension. . . . You just can’t imagine the scene. They summoned us into the office. We were all dressed in black. I was pregnant, in my eighth month. . . . And it was just like a regular marriage ceremony. Afterward we were only home at my place. It wasn’t what you’d call a real celebration. I mean, I was so sad and all. I had a healthy, happy birth. My daughter was a healthy baby, and she was the favorite of the nurses at the clinic. Right after that, the next day, I had to go down into the cellar, the sirens were blaring. And two days later, we were all shipped off to A., all of us who had just given birth—[to get away] from the pilots. And that’s where I came down with postpartum psychosis.

The child remains with her mother, who is admitted to a clinic where she undergoes electroshock treatment. This jarred her back to health. I was so scared of that. I thought I was done for. It takes your breath away, your head spins, the electricity zips right through you, and then they shove this piece of rubber into your mouth. Then you sleep for two or three hours, and feel OK afterward. But beforehand you have such awful anxiety. I had it twelve times. I don’t want to go through that ever again.

When Sieglinde Erger begins to free herself from the state of numbness into which she had fallen after the collapse of her feelings and hopes, she finds herself in that postwar society of the large urban centers in the Soviet zone, where women outnumber men three to two. Yet emotionally, too, she is unable to enter into a new relationship. I always had bad luck with men. I simply wasn’t able to handle that any more. I kept on seeing my husband there in front of me. Just couldn’t get over that. I just couldn’t get over that. And when I read the news of his death, well, I didn’t, wasn’t able to cry, ’cause I simply couldn’t grasp the thought that he wouldn’t be coming back. So it just turned out after a while that I stayed by myself, alone. And now I’ve gotten used to it. Now I don’t want to

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get involved again. Sure, I had my admirers, but they all disappointed me somehow. I don’t know, either they were divorced, or married, or didn’t have a particularly nice character, and I always used to make comparisons.

Since the war, she has been living with her daughter in the small, twoand-a-half-room apartment of her parents; because at the outset she initially gets a widow’s pension, she is able to devote herself to her child. The men disappear. Her father dies after the end of the war, her brothers come home from captivity, find jobs here and there, and marry. One moves to the other side of town; the other cannot get out of a rash marriage and goes alone to the West—divorce, German style. And that is a trip with no return, because membership in the SS, failure to pay maintenance, and fleeing the GDR all add up to an incalculable risk should one ever decide to pay a visit back home. The household, consisting only of women, comes under heavy pressure when the GDR in 1950 decides to stop support for resettled Germans from the East and war widows in order to mobilize the labor market for the construction of socialism. Sieglinde starts to work again, and in the beginning her mother is able to care for the child. But when her mother becomes too busy taking in work, she has to look for an all-day sitter and a new job closer to home. She finds a job in the office of a screw manufacturing factory and has pleasant memories of the atmosphere there. But the work itself and working conditions were hell on earth. Over there at the screw factory, I liked it, but there was an awful din! I was in the hall upstairs; down below the machines were roaring, and I had to write from morning ’til evening, figures. We didn’t have any fresh air. . . . For ten years, all . . . I wrote was bills, adding figures from morning ’til evening. Numbers, numbers, numbers. . . . I liked the place very much, but my nerves just couldn’t handle it anymore. Then I was admitted to a psychiatric clinic.

So after twenty years, she experiences her second mental breakdown. Along with the noise and the numbers, there were a few other problems: that same year, her daughter had left home and her mother had died. In the middle of menopause, she was now totally alone; adding up figures became intolerable, and she began to acquire new skills in order to find a better job. Sieglinde started attending evening classes to prepare for an exam to qualify as industrial clerk. She never completely recovers from this breakdown. It is true that she finds peace and quiet, words of comfort, and chemotherapy in the clinic, and she looks for a new apartment in order to put some distance between herself and her memories. Sieglinde passes her exam and locates a better

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position in the financial section of another firm. But nothing has changed in her basic situation, the new apartment is noisy, and in her new job there is a terrible atmosphere at work. Crummy bosses, the guys in charge were really horrible, they were terrible. I didn’t like those fourteen years one bit. . . . Those were all genuine financial managers, you understand, and they were kind of peculiar. Bossy. Real domineering types, that’s what they were. And three of them were my superiors. That was awful. And took its psychological toll on me.

Every few years she has an attack and must spend some time in the clinic, where she feels secure and protected. Other than that, she maintains contacts with her daughter’s family and also starts taking trips in order to escape from her loneliness. The nicest excursion Sieglinde goes on is to the Soviet Union, her only airplane trip. She remembers various sights, things she bought, and the “people, they’re so friendly there, so helpful. We were simply bowled over.” This brings her back to the everyday experience in her own city: So sullen . . . the faces so harried, nothing but work, work, work, money, money, money. Hoarding so that they can get everything. . . . There’s the annual fair, the press festival, but other than that it’s very quiet in our town. The streets are deserted after dark. Everyone’s at home in front of the tube. Just nobody.

After retirement, Sieglinde Erger was also permitted by the authorities to travel to the West to visit her favorite brother, whom she hadn’t seen for twenty-five years. But that dream turned into another trauma. The pace, insecurity, and materialism of the West were too much for her to handle, and her excitement at seeing her brother compounded the situation. So the day after her arrival she came down with another attack. Her brother took her to the clinic, but everything was strange there; she missed the encouraging words of the nurses, and at night they tied her to the bed with leather straps. The temptations of the consumer society did not offset these experiences. She wanted to see her brother once more, but thought the journey by train was too long. “I wrote him that we’d just have to accept the fact that we’d never see each other again.” For war widows, the conditioning factors culminating in the life crises experienced by Sieglinde Erger were not uncommon, each taken by itself. But their interlinkage in her case proved to be intolerable: marriage hand in hand with death in order to preserve your reputation and claims to a pension; a crisis of loneliness in an unacceptable job situation that you can break out of only by picking up additional skills at an advanced age. Her family network proved strong enough for dealing with the conse-

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quences of the war in a practical sense, but it was insufficient when it came to handling the psychological stress. Social support institutions helped her, both the clinics and the pensioners’ club with its cheap lunches. But more extensive prospects that might have been able to dissolve her fixations were not forthcoming; neither the proportion of males to females in her age bracket nor the prevailing politics of the time allowed for that. I wasn’t so interested in that sort of stuff. I thought, nothing would ever come of it, there wouldn’t be any unity, again and again the same thing. Sometimes you just didn’t feel interested anymore in hearing about it. Since all they did was go on and on talking about peace, all those words about peace, that they want to create peace. And nothing was accomplished.

In her case, the church would have been a more likely option, because like her mother, she is very religious. Sieglinde reads the Bible, prays for peace and health, watches church services on television. But she made a break with the social community of the church when, during the hard times when people were going hungry, the man who came to collect church taxes caught sight of a roll on her kitchen table and remarked that she had money for white bread, but not for God. The two women promptly showed him to the door and then withdrew formally from membership in the church.

The Shaping and Limits of Identity: A Constant Inner Discord “Can’t you ask something simpler?” the Karrers say when I pause in my questioning, taken aback by the timing of their marriage: February 1945. Both of them are from working-class families in Saxony and met while in the military. She was a navy assistant, then twenty-two years old, and already an officer; he was three years her junior, and a private first class in an antiaircraft battery. The first evening they met they felt they had known each other forever. And even today, they tap this inner harmony to ward off the tensions of the external world, tensions that have the quality of being both real and fictive at the same time. Irmgard Karrer’s parents were Communists. In 1933, her father, a foreman in a paper factory, went out and personally bought his daughter the uniform for the Nazi League of German Girls (BDM). She liked the hiking and singing in the BDM, and her father hoped that this gesture would serve to help mask his activities as a member of a Communist cell. Nonetheless, he was subsequently arrested because of a leaflet, and released a short time later. After the blitzkrieg campaign in France, he was

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inducted into the army; she was employed in an office in the same factory where he worked, and an exchange deal was arranged: if the daughter would join the naval auxiliary, the father would be called back by his factory and released from military duty. Both were hardworking and competent, each in their own way. The girl advanced rapidly up the ladder to the rank of officer, while the father succeeded in salvaging all the important machinery in his plant during the war and the following occupation. The fact that the machinery was later dismantled by the Soviets came to him as a terrible shock. In other ways, too, he found it hard to adjust politically to the new situation. The veteran Communist of 1921 was slated to become a director of a plant, and on another occasion a mayor in Mecklenburg. But he refused, and remained in his factory; he did not even join the SED. They had not imagined it would be the way it was now, he said; they thought it would be different from the Third Reich, especially that there would be more freedom. After his situation was compounded by private troubles in the 1950s, he threw a hammer into a machine; waiting to stand trial for sabotage, he commited suicide. The daughter’s report contains too many gaps to allow us to paint a genuine portrait of her father. But it does suffice to explain why though the emerging socialist conditions seemed to be quite natural in her eyes, she nonetheless did not become actively involved. Max Karrer’s father also died in dubious political circumstances. He stemmed from a Social Democratic background and had been the only one for Hitler in his entire family even before 1933. A bricklayer, he was a disabled veteran of World War I: after being buried alive near Verdun, he returned with a serious nervous disorder, which gradually rendered him unfit to work and dependent on a pension for the disabled. There was no more ardent advocate of pensions for disabled war veterans than Adolf Hitler. Those pensions, from the standpoint of workers, were quite substantial—indeed so generous the Karrer family was even able to build a house so that their father, increasingly incapacitated and unable to walk, would at least be able to enjoy a garden. For his only son, Max, the atmosphere was oppressive. Following a bicycle accident, his mother was afraid she might also lose her son as well, and refused to let him out of her sight. The young man fled as soon as he had found a good reason to escape his mother’s siege of solicitude—and that good reason was Hitler Youth (HJ). He was absolutely enthusiastic about the HJ—“since I was able to escape my mother’s clutches and had my freedom there.” He remained active in the HJ, a rather atypical choice for young men from working-class backgrounds, while going on to attend the best apprentice training center for industrial mechanics in the area after finishing school. When he was called to the Labor Service, he

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felt like “a bird let free from a cage,” and he liked the army too. Enthusiastic about the Third Reich, he was astonished when the man he most looked up to in the family, his grandfather, did not conceal his Social Democratic misgivings about the Nazis. Later on he would also learn that a sister of his father helped hide a Communist teacher undercover in her house over many years. He was already in the army when his father was unexpectedly sped off to a clinic and his mother was then informed that he had suddenly died. Though there was no proof, all of them believed he was murdered as part of the euthanasia program. During the last year of the war, the faith of the girl and her husband-tobe in victory and the Reich collapses. She has to admit to the girls she is in charge of that she no longer knows what all the madness is really about. In his antiaircraft battery, Max is defending a harbor against bombing raids, though all the ships have long since been sunk and the city leveled. After one such air raid, they travel together for a short stretch on the train, and suddenly decide, on an inspired lark, to get married. They are even given leave so they can celebrate their marriage at home with her Communist father, and return just in time to be taken prisoner. But in Schleswig-Holstein, captivity is a brief matter, and a representative of the company where Max Karrer did his apprenticeship who is now a British officer in the camp even offers him a chance to emigrate to England and the prospect of a job there as a technician. However, his wife feels homesick, even though he has managed to find work again, and stubbornly convinces him to accompany her on a two-week trip home, traveling on coal trains. When he catches sight of the first Russians at the station in Gotha, drunk and boisterous because they have to travel with a steam locomotive, he wants to turn around and go back. But Max is moved by his wife’s tears, and finally decides: “you know, the way things happen—everything was in ruins back there, here too everything lay in ruins—but here, well, this is our home, so let’s stay.” Once again the old factory connection proves its value. Although Max Karrer, a former Hitler Youth activist and Wehrmacht private, is denounced at the town hall as a “war criminal” by an overzealous citizen, a master workman from his former plant, now working (as an antifascist) in the employment office, protects him from being shipped off to labor in the uranium mines. Instead, he sends him to an inconspicuous corner, arranging a job in a small private firm employing a dozen workers; with his journeyman qualification, Max Karrer soon advances to something like a foreman, and stays on there twenty-four years. Though the Social Democrats and Communists ask him to join the party right off in 1945, Max does not wish to have anything more to do with politics. Anyhow, he dislikes the local party, especially the one made up of new converts or “me-too antifascists,” as he labels them—to distinguish such persons

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from the Communists returning from the concentration camps. The latter, Max says, had a totally different, constructive outlook. At this point (1946), his wife recognizes for the first time that her youthful enthusiasm was nothing but a sham and that her father, who actually should be on the side of the victors, is at odds with the new conditions—since the situation reminds him too much of former times. She gives birth to two children and initially concentrates her energies and attention on her family and day-to-day survival, including taking in work at home. In the 1950s, they buy a motorcycle with a sidecar, take their first trips, and make friends with other campers. During the fifties and sixties, Frau Karrer gets her qualification in management and soon takes over a post managing a sales outlet of the cooperative Konsum chain. The Karrers have fond memories of those years, “things were improving.” In terms of people’s expectations at the time, consumer goods and food supplies were better and more affordable back then compared with today, there were enough workers, and not so much was being exported. Herr Karrer thinks the most important thing then was that the veteran, denazified specialists were still around on the job; they knew the economy “inside out.” Moreover, the leadership was still able to take vigorous political steps: Ulbricht reminds him of Gorbachev, the way he used to pay surprise visits back in the 1950s to outlying industrial areas and give corrupt party personnel the unceremonial boot. Off in the isolated corner of the small private firm, they discover gaps in the market and loopholes in the bureaucratic system of regulations— but no one interferes with them because they are competent and keep their mouths shut. The Karrers manufacture lighters, and he invents a new, successful model that has the appearance of a product “from the West.” They can even afford to needle the union treasurer and send him packing. But their progress creates a temptation for Max when the party dispatches a more capable propagandist over to their quiet, private little corner to have a heart-to-heart talk with them. That guy was an agitator, and he sure had a way with words; he was able to explain what socialism really was out to achieve and how it would all function. And so you said: “OK, that sounds pretty good.” And, well, in that small firm, they didn’t bother us at all, see. We were selling our products. So in the end you got to believing it yourself, I mean, that it could amount to something good. Until I finally said: “Wait a sec, hold on now, that’s the line. I’m starting to get dragged into this, no, I don’t want that.” I was against it from the very first day.

This refusal is a kind of loyalty to his experience of how politics can both inspire and disillusion a person. It is not based on another political conviction, but rather is rooted in a sense of passive defense—an attitude

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that accepts things from force of habit as long as you can personally get out of the way. “We had a police state. And we respected that state to the extent that just about nobody ever said a word against the thing, I mean officially.” At another point, he comments that their generation had, after all, never known democracy; they had still been children back then. At the end of the interview, we discuss the media, social progress, and the generation gap. In contrast with his wife, who, he says, wants to find out what’s happening and then get upset, Max doesn’t read the papers, except for the death notices. But every evening they sit together to watch the West German television news. “We live in a constant inner discord” (Zwiespalt). Superficially, that sounds to Western ears as though the Karrers were physically in the East, mentally in the West. Yet that is not exactly what the inner disharmony consists of. They think the terrible thing about the public arena in the GDR is that they are constantly being dupped—if the actual abuses and problems were talked about, then people could take action to remedy the situation. He believes West German television more, but then feels directly reminded of the situation when he was at his antiaircraft battery during the war, listening as a Nazi to the enemy British radio station. “They said one thing, the other side said something else—and the ‘shaft’ is somewhere in between the two horses.” The expression “inner discord” (Zwiespalt) surfaces again: now that they are pensioners, naturally they are considering the idea of taking a look at the West with their own eyes. They are certain they will come back, but Max Karrer hesitates, because he doesn’t want to “get into an inner discord” as a result of the trip. Which is to say: the divisive elements in the images he carries in his head are already enough tension for him. Maybe he is afraid he could lose hold of that “shaft” in the middle. Both still espouse the goal of reunification, but for a long time now they have not believed they will live long enough to see it. The partition, they simply think, is “unnatural: after all, we’re all Germans, we speak the same language, we have the same feelings.” Along with all the phony official talk covering up the reality of real socialism, Max Karrer criticizes the inefficiency in the GDR, the decline in morale at work at the grass roots level. He complains that the bosses are not as good as they used to be; they lack practical experience and cannot put their ideas into practice. In private business, a situation like that would be absolutely untenable. But there are two sides to that coin, too, and there is no subject the Karrers, who otherwise see eye to eye on most things, have quarreled more about than this. His view is that of management: young people no longer have any work ethic, social policy has gone too far, and its impact is acting to restrict the efficiency of shops and factories. While he is busy explaining in detail to me the concerns and worries of industrial managers, his wife constantly interrupts, comment-

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ing on how nice it is that a worker is able to apportion his or her time, that bosses have to listen to people, and that women get their guaranteed maternity leave, a year off at nearly full pay to take care of the baby. To put it succinctly: they are singing me the duet, so familiar to Western ears, of the partnership and tension between management and labor, but in state-owned industry. There is also a historical background to all this. In 1971, when the Ulbricht era came to an end and the period of improvements in social policy commenced, the Karrers also went through a major crisis that changed everything. Max Karrer had overworked himself to the point of a nervous breakdown in his small private firm. Full of technical enthusiasm, but lacking practically everything in his dilapidated small shop, he had been trying to develop an automated machine for making lighters. During the day he managed production in his workshop, and nights he spent struggling through technical specialized literature; he took out patents and designed the machine. The whole affair ended with a serious nervous breakdown; he was obliged to spend six months recuperating in a clinic, and the doctors were willing to release him only if he went back to a job where he did not have to ponder problems and tax his brain. This was the low point in Max Karrer’s life, in which he had sought escape in a devotion to work and technology. In his absence, his wife finally succeeded in selling his parents’ house—divided into two apartments—because they could no longer afford the repairs demanded by the tenants living there. The money turned out to be just enough to buy a new Trabant, and the couple moved into an apartment in a new highrise block where they were free of the economic burdens of private property. When Max Karrer was released from the clinic, everyone advised him to look for a job in state-owned industry. He found a position as a simple workman once again, but his wages were 50 percent better than what he had been earning before. Giving up her job as a manager in a retail store, his wife Irmgard accompanied him to the factory to make sure that he did not overexert himself again. Naturally things turn out differently, because the only therapy for him is work. They have new Japanese equipment at the factory, and no one there is familiar with this type of machinery—the idea appeals to him. While working shifts, he picks up an additional qualification as a textile technician; within three years he is appointed head of a team in the plant management, and five years later he advances to technical director of the plant. His wife remains on shift work at the machine. Max’s nerves are in excellent shape now, but his heart starts to act up, and he has to gradually reduce his work load. Shortly before retirement—though of course he wants to continue working—comes his final exit from the plant; Max Karrer’s doctor forces him to accept a full disability pension. His wife also continues to work a bit even after retirement, because the social setup

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at the workplace allows for a less rigid pace and schedule in the case of elderly workers. But soon she stops too, and finds her new retired life quite pleasant. By contrast, her husband feels that being released from duty is like being sentenced: “I have to learn now how to live with that.” Over and beyond all Max Karrer’s critical views of state-owned industry—the excessive role of the party there, the bottlenecks in secondary parts and materials, the clumsy nature of the large combine, the shortcomings in the supply of basic consumer goods—he is especially confused about the younger generation, their lack of a proper attitude toward work, namely, “as a moral duty toward the state—we live in order to work.” On top of this, he feels the younger generation is being showered with social benefits—which is unfair if you compare that with the low level of pensions, “because we were the ones, after all, who pulled the horsecart out of the mud.” Once again, I am not sure I understand him, and ask: what does it mean to say “people work for the state” if you actually dislike that state? Well, to put it in a nutshell, that’s the feeling of duty, you know, the impetus. After all, we all have to work. If no one worked, then there wouldn’t be anything, zilch. It’s like what they’re always saying here: the way we will live tomorrow depends on how we work today. I felt I needed to work. We had to get on our feet again. We had to get out of that rut. What good would it have possibly been to sit pretty, hands in our lap, doing nothing? I’d ’ve done the same thing no matter what the system.

Interviewer: Does it really have anything to do with the system, or rather only with you—namely, the fact that you enjoy working? I like to work. Yeah, I enjoy working. And the way it was, if you really looked at the situation, well, this item was out of stock, there wasn’t any of that, this was no good, that was no good. I just got a big kick out of being able right off the bat to produce a lighter that was durable, a product people liked. That was a source of satisfaction. The fact that things were progressing. And let me tell you—things were progressing then.

Further Interim Remarks A sentence, a text, two life crises, the silhouette of a double biography: first insights and attempts at comprehending the experience of that generation in the GDR labeled as the “generation of construction” (Aufbaugeneration), men and women in the twenty-to-thirty age bracket at the end of the war, and between thirty-five and forty-five when the Berlin wall went up in 1961. An antifascist functionary explains how the party

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molded him and what party obligations he feels; a female factory party worker sketches the legacy of political realism among new recruits. A skilled worker who has advanced to the position of running a stateowned firm conjures up the revolutionary strength expended in the process of industrialization. A war widow describes the crises and everyday supports in a life devoid of choice. A married couple represents the way in which the apolitical were shaped, pointing to that foundation of authoritarianism and “secondary virtues” (diligence, performance of duty) inherited by the GDR, which functioned to reduce conflict there and helped generate a large segment of the accomplishments in building the country. These three women and three men might be representative of basic complementary types in the generation that built state-owned industry, though naturally not in respect to the individuality of their experience and its expression. Moreover, my examples were selected with a view to gaining possible access to rather typical processes via the agency of memories of extreme experiences—because the possibilities for maintaining silent normality break down in the extreme case. This is especially true when it comes to the dividing line of identity fissure (in each instance due to differing factors) running through the six biographies briefly introduced above. Is that rupture a product of the various constellations of conflict these people experienced, or does it express more general structures of life experience in the GDR, only more visible in the extreme form? For purposes of generalization, it would be necessary to compare the life trajectories of other individuals from similar backgrounds, but such a project would far exceed the limits of the present paper. Only by a procedure of that kind could one establish a definite typology. Another perspective could be pursued, delving into the linking elements between the types, in which peculiarities of generation and circumstances are disclosed. Nonetheless, our six cases do permit a few initial observations. All come from working-class families, all were shaped politically by experiences in the family or during youth; and only the males here were able to acquire vocational skills as young men. In the Nazi period and the war, they were all indelibly stamped by their experience: Max Haber spent a long time in prison as a result of his Communist activities, Pia Diemer was embedded in the milieu of a restrained opportunism, Siegfried Homann experienced the marginalization of his Social Democratic father, and was wounded three times during the war. For Sieglinde Erger, there was the delayed stabilization of her situation, and its abrupt termination due to the loss of her husband and her traumatic experience of childbirth. In the case of the Karrers, their fathers became the victims of their own models and ideals; in their youth, the absurd fiction of their politicization as children collapsed; they sought refuge in the private sphere and in a capacity

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for hard work and accomplishment that was awakened while serving in the Reich Labor Service and the military. All advanced up the ladder in the GDR and acquired additional qualifications—the men to a greater degree, while the women made up for the vocational training withheld from them during their youth. Only in exceptional cases was this social mobility up and out of the working class— due primarily to their political commitment and activity. But the rhythm of their advancement was indeed determined in part by their political involvement. In the case of Ludwig Haber, his politics were a proven fact of long standing, and advancement began right after liberation. In Pia Diemer’s case, both political involvement and personal advancement traced a rising curve during the Cold War. In the instance of Siegfried Homann, a member of the SED with a Social Democratic background and no party duties, his political involvement led him in the early 1950s into the ranks of technical management. Max Karrer, an opponent of the regime yet a supporter of the state, invested considerable energy as early as the 1950s; yet that effort was not rewarded by formal advancement until the 1970s. All individuals experienced more or less serious declines, three as a result of mental and/or physical exhaustion, closely associated with overexertion in their profession; and two due to politics, one because she wished to continue with her job as political functionary in a plant even after that job had in fact been eliminated, and one woman who left her job in order to care for her husband. Moreover, in all these cases in the postwar period, there were at times constellations of three generations living together for the care and support of children and parents, housed in apartments that were all too small for the purpose; in some instances, these constellations were of longer-term duration. Such observations sharpen our sights for factors such as political molding, social mobility, family, or illness. Those factors can be reduced to indicators and can be illustrated in quantitative terms by corresponding data drawn from a larger number of interviews. The reference to roughly comparable groups is not meant to claim that these quantitative data are representative for the urban locality investigated or even for the entire GDR. Rather, what is of interest here are the immanent quantitative relations by which individual cases in the group can be localized and insights gained from such cases can be checked and evaluated. This procedure for the isolation of saturated heuristic types will be briefly illustrated here using thirty-six life histories drawn from our locality of investigation; these biographies can be classified according to the occupation of the father and broken down into three equal groups of lower middle-class (Kleinbürger, including four women), working-class men, and workingclass women.24 A quantitative formation of indicators of this type—which, moreover,

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has only a limited accuracy due the inclusion of certain data based on “informed guesses”—can relate to two quite different spheres. Examples of these will be presented in the following two sections. On the one hand, there is the ethnographic or sociographic dimension of the history of everyday life—that is, data regarding material living conditions or family constellations at specific times. On the other hand, what is at issue are quantitative indicators of so-called cohort biographies—that is, the attempt to shed light on the diachronic dynamics in groups by utilizing biographical indicators.

Everyday Life as Bolster and Burden: Family Relations and Property Ownership Since everyday practice consists to a large extent of preconscious routines, everyday life is not an object for the active memory of the individual. However, circumstances, contexts, and processes perceived over longer periods, such as living conditions, family constellations, and work routines, remain latent within memory and can be recalled and described on demand with a high degree of accuracy. Such recall can occur when a question is raised regarding corresponding data, for example. Frequently, however, this latent memory of everyday life is also used as a kind of prop room for the staging of emotional and meaningful scenes drawn from the anecdotal memory. The accuracy of such everyday memories in the interview situation is based primarily on the fact that the statement about such details only rarely has a recognizable connection with the complex of meanings and values of the statement. However, since these are data that may have changed over time, the only way they could be elicited in a memory interview would be by means of an unconscionable, exhausting procedure, such as asking about all seven apartments in which the respondent lived. Thus, what is involved is always only a specific selection of data already manifest in the stories or ascertained by focused inquiry. Many respondents have an allergic reaction to such “meaningless” questions, so that it is justifiable to assert in more general terms that the accuracy of memories from everyday life is at a high level, but their regularity and comparability remain negligible. Yet within a group where individuals are linked by several social data, sufficient indications can generally be collated in order to describe group-specific living conditions. If a question is based on quantitative dimensions, and this always necessitates indication of the time when these dimensions applied, evaluation as a general rule is possible only in the tolerance range of a temporal spectrum and for indicators with a very high degree of generality and significance. Let me give an example to illustrate this. Kin relations are of

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TABLE 1 Ties to the GDR and Contacts with the West: 36 life-histories from an industrial town in Saxony (1987)

Parents

Lower Middle Classa

N Relatives or acquaintances in the West of these: close family extended family acquaintances Family dependency ties in locality/GDR House/business/“inherited apt.” No appreciable property ca. 1950 Considered migrating to the West

Working-Class Male

Female

12

12

12

7 1 4 3 9 5 5 6

7 1 3 3 11 3 7 2

5 2 2 1 11 2 7 2

a A third of these are female. Parents’ occupational categories: four independent craftsmen, four (small) entrepreneurs, four civil servants (one at a higher level).

paramount importance in understanding the factors of cohesion holding together postwar society in the GDR. Who had relatives or good friends in the West, and how many of them were close reference persons?25 Of equal importance is the question whether the individual or his/her nuclear family in their locality of residence were dependent on extended family relations or felt an obligation in this regard—for example, duties involving the care of a working mother’s child by grandparents or other relatives, or taking care of isolated family members or those otherwise in need of assistance, and who could not be easily relocated—especially parents. It is often remarked that many citizens in the GDR were held back from fleeing to the West (which they might have done otherwise) due to the possession of a house or for other material reasons. Since already as early as the 1950s, possession of a house in the GDR was more a burden than a privilege, and often did not bring about any improvement in living conditions, that argument may retain a certain validity in individual cases, but is not valid at a more generalized level. This is also illustrated by an enumeration of property ownership in our group of thirty-six native respondents, with its relatively higher probability of house ownership even when so-called inherited apartments are included—favorable rental circumstances especially in residential co-ops which can be passed on among a circle of relatives. Table 1 presents interview data (for the period 1945–61) with instances where the respondent stated that she/he had considered going to the West or not returning from there—for example, as a POW or during a trip. Bear in mind that since this is a politically dangerous question in

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the GDR, responses that contained only a hint of such an intention were also counted. Initially, what is striking is that more than half of the respondents had some point of closer contact in the West, but these in most instances did not function as “pull factors.” Even of the four who had close family members in the West, only one considered migrating. In contrast, the element of family dependency ties in the locality proved to be the most significant factor of rooting—especially since only those cases were counted in which there was not just a family member, but rather someone who was needed, or who was dependent on the respondent. Possession of property is negligible, and in no case where people considered migration to the West and owned a house, apartment, or rights to a business were such material possessions a decisive reason for abandoning the idea to migrate. Rather, the consideration of possible migration correlates with factors such as uprootedness, dispossession, and a lack of prospects for the future, culturally or jobwise. By contrast, abandonment of the idea correlates largely with factors of close family dependency ties. Consideration of possible migration was clearly higher among the lower middle class than the working class. We must therefore turn to an examination of dynamic social and political factors.

Milieus and Cohorts: Looking Back from Progress Since our interviews focus on life history, it is possible to evaluate them in terms of indicators for social and political experience. These are presented below, divided into groups, in three levels of precision. One important aspect is absent, one which can be examined in a quantitatively meaningful way only by using a larger group of interviewees—that is, the generational structure of the respondents. In this case, it encompasses two generations (those born 1901–32). Both the average age of the respondents and their age distribution are roughly equal in all three social groups. In table 2, the data for the long-term trend of social mobility, correlated with occupation, can be considered reliable in almost all instances. If one compares the last occupation achieved with that of the father, the most striking feature is the strong tendency for upward mobility from the working class, especially the recruitment of white-collar workers in management positions from the ranks of workers. This tendency is also in evidence among women from working-class backgrounds, but is clearly weaker there: advancement to positions of management is quantitatively less, and the positions involved are at a lower level on the ladder. The remaining scope for possible advancement is due largely to the stabilization of employment in switching from cottage industry to more skilled

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Table 2 Social Mobility and Future Prospects: 36 life-histories from an industrial town in Saxony (1987)

Parents N Average age of respondents Last occupation compared with father’s occupation (trend) advancement slight advancement similar slight decline decline Interim extreme shifts in trend of these: pre-1945 post-1945 Occupation of children compared with that of respondentb (SED)c advancement (16) similar (9) decline (1) N (12 SED) (26) Number of children in families of origin (+ those who died at an early age)b Difficult childhood Incomplete families family of origin own family

Lower Middle Classa

Working-Class Male

Female

12 70

12 68.5

12 70

1 4 5 2 — 7 3 5

8 — 4 — — 2 1 2

3 4 4 1 — 3 2 1

5 2 1 8 30

10 11 1 22 (+1d) 27 (+4)

17 2 1 20 28 (+5)

1

4

6

2 2

2 3

4 7

a A third of these are female. Parents’ occupational categories: four independent craftsmen, four (small) entrepreneurs, four civil servants (one at a higher level). b Total number of children in respective group. c Separate listing of number of children of SED members from all social groups (12 out of 36). d One child still in elementary school.

positions in office work, though not associated with management responsibilities. Among the lower middle-class respondents, there is stabilization with a rising tendency, but it is of little significance given the extreme degree of uncertainty in biographical trajectory due to a high number of interim shifts in trend. If one traces the trend paying attention to the education and occupation of the children, the general tendency to advancement continues, but emphases are reversed. Children of lower mid-

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dle-class parents have been able to break free from the interim tendency toward decline in their parents’ generation; the upward trend is most clearly pronounced among children of working-class women—who prove themselves in the second generation to be the real reserves for skilled personnel. In contrast, among the male respondents, this tendency is undercut by the fact that the advancement of the parental generation was so marked that their children have already reached a ceiling; where that is not the case, advancement continues. Almost of greater interest are the total numbers of children in the individual social groups: compared with the average number of children in their family of origin (ca. 2.5), most families now have somewhat less than two children on average; that is, they just about reproduce themselves. This differs when we come to the lower middle class, formerly in the top position and now in the throes of a hopeless and rapid decline in numbers.26 The extent to which these figures reflect the existential foundation of long-term prospects is reflected in the data for members of the SED of that generation, independent of their social status. They have the largest number of children; in respect to social mobility, the children of the party form the vanguard of the trend among the male proletariat. Finally, the figures point to a special achievement level among women; that dimension should be viewed in connection with the smaller tendency toward advancement in their own generation. While all male respondents here from the working class raised their children in stable marriages, twothirds of which were entered into after the war, more than half the female respondents brought up their almost equally large number of children without any male partner in the home, or as single parents for a certain period of time. And all of these children succeeded in amounting to something in terms of job qualification. However, the long-term trend in the development of social data should not be equated with the biographical and historical experience of the respondents. In order to explore that realm of experience for the social groups here, all processes of qualification and (especially occupational) promotion can be arrayed on a time axis as positive values, while all occupational and social declines, experiences of discrimination and losses (especially the loss of close reference persons) can be listed as negative; particularly in the case of traumatic discrimination (such as the imprisonment of Ludwig Haber) or traumatic losses (the death of Sieglinde Erger’s husband), these have been weighted double. The data in table 3 are derived from corresponding remarks in the interviews. The relation between positive and negative values can be expressed in terms of a positive or negative figure for individual units of time.27 The positive high for that figure (above +1) indicates the degree of predominance of experiences of life enhancement; the negative low (below − 1) signals the pre-

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Table 3 Social Mobility as Experience: 36 life histories from an industrial town in Saxony (1987)

Parents

Lower Middle Classa

N Average age of respondents Qualifications, promotions vs. declines, discrimination, losses compared to lifetime below 18 years 18–25 years 25–40 years above 40 compared to political period to 1933 1933–45 1945–61 after 1961

Working-Class Male

Female

12 70

12 68.5

12 70

+1.3b +1.9 +1.3 −1.1

+3 1 +6.5 +2.2

−1.8 +1.2 −1.9 +1.7c

+2 +1.5d −1.7 +1.3

+2 1e +3.3f +1.7g

−2.5 −2 1 −1.1

a A third of these are female. Parents’ occupational categories: four independent craftsmen, four (small) entrepreneurs, four civil servants (one at a higher level). b This value is so low because children from lower middle-class backgrounds wished to pursue occupations other than those they were permitted to train for. Young people from working-class backgrounds did not entertain such dreams and aspirations, and thus experienced their more restricted opportunity for advancement in a far more positive way. The value would have to be +2.7 if lowered by inclusion of these frustrated occupational aspirations. The fact that it is still lower than among male working-class youth is due to the presence of females in this group; for the most part, they were denied any opportunity for specialist vocational training. c If the factor of illness (and care for the sick) were eliminated in this row, the resulting values would clearly demonstrate the costs involved in an achievement society of the type exemplified by the GDR: +1.2 for those of middle-class background, and a nonexpressible value (since it must be divided by 0) of +24 by males from a proletarian background, and +7 for females from this stratum. d Minus anti-Semitic discrimination (two cases): +6. e War included in calculations; minus that factor: approximately +3. f War captivity included in calculations; minus that factor: approximately +3.8. g Minus the factor of illness: +19.

dominance of experiences of life contraction. Both relate to the personal and occupational experience of the respective group in the period noted. For the temporal scale, use was made both of biographically significant periodization and conventional political periods. What is striking here are the highly positive values for proletarian men as young adults, compared with the clearly lower if not indeed negative

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experience for females, except during their later youth.28 Among lower middle-class respondents from these age groups, their entire youth was experienced in stratum-specific terms as positive, while everything after that is registered as depressing in relation to their original horizon of expectations. The final line of figures is of greatest interest: the positive evaluation continues on into older age, even if at a lower level, and registers the highest positive values among females as well. Taking the group aged over forty, if one were to subtract all experiences of decline and loss caused by illness or early disability—considering only those illnesses that appeared before the age of retirement—then all values would register positive. The tendency would be slight among the lower middle-class respondents, more pronounced in positivity among older females than younger males, and there would be a sharp career-related rise among older working-class men. All experiences of decline in the latter group, in which advancement tendencies culminate, are due solely to illness, that is, overexertion, overadaptation, and physical exhaustion. By contrast, decline among females in this age group can be attributed only partially to mental or physical exhaustion; there are just as many trajectories of decline because women have given up their jobs (totally or in part) in order to devote themselves to family members, in the main mothers, in need of care. The late advancement of women—which in any event does not reach as high a level as male advancement, although it is significant as a movement and an expansion of biographical experience—thus remains dependent on obligations in the family. Among women regularly employed, such obligations also included previous care by grandparents for their grandchildren. Scrutinizing this summation of experience in terms of historical periodization, what initially strikes the eye are the negative values. Most noticeable are the consistently negative figures for proletarian women; only during the period of the construction of the country (1945–61) was the privatization of the war’s consequences offset by processes of gaining higher-level skills. The sole other negative balance is that of the lower middle class during the phase of denazification and the decline in their social and political prospects during the “transition period.” Yet one should also bear in mind that the value obtained for the Third Reich is deceptive, since our respondents included a Jewish woman and the son of a Jewish woman and non-Jewish man—parental background very rare for the GDR as a whole. Without inclusion of their experience of discrimination, the positive value for the lower middle class in the Nazi period would be almost double that for proletarian males during the period of “the building of socialism.” However, the balance for working-class males in the Third Reich would also be clearly in the positive range if we were to subtract the one Communist among them, and if one goes into

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greater detail here, the prewar phase under the Third Reich for men of proletarian origin takes on a positive value similar to that for the postwar phase under socialism. These somewhat obscured findings from the Third Reich and the postwar period, in which the final balance masks the components which make it up, necessitate a more detailed political specification. On the whole, that undoubtedly entails greater difficulties than specifying the longerterm social perspective or social experience, because political belief—and the changes it underwent in Germany in general and the GDR in particular—is something complex, revealing multiple layers. If, for example, only three of our thirty-six respondents can recall that their parental homes were National Socialist in political orientation (or that their father was a member of a Nazi organization), that may be possible, but would represent a surprisingly low value in any German sample. I therefore would counsel a certain skepticism in approaching the Nazi-related data contained in table 4 in particular, despite the fact that I consider these data on political continuity to be the most interesting. As I mentioned, only three respondents claim to come from a National Socialist parental home, but about half were associated with a Nazi organization, either directly or via their spouse. This reflects the penetration of the organizational power of the Third Reich into a solid left-wing milieu. Fifteen respondents come from left-wing parental homes, and five (not in each case the same) were active on the left or had a leftist orientation in their youth—and we can be certain that these values have not been underreported. Yet their distribution is intriguing: in respect to parental home, Social Democrats outnumber Communists three to one. The degree of decline throughout the Third Reich is just as high, because only four persons from the twelve Social Democratic—and one respondent from the three Communist—parental homes joined the SED after 1945. Twothirds of this traditional left-wing potential remains in abeyance, to say the least, in the postwar period; conversely, more than half of the SED members among our respondents do not come from a left-wing tradition. Moreover, there can be no doubt that the SED sees itself as a party rooted in a Communist tradition, yet among our group of respondents, less than one in eight stem from that background; even more significant, only one in six among SED members. Of course, it should not be forgotten that the Communists paid a high price in blood and suffering during the Third Reich, and that many who did not emigrate remained loyal to the old goals of the KPD; they could not comprehend the shift in orientation of their party toward a bourgeois democracy in 1945 and the behavior of the Soviet Union at that time—so that Ulbricht in fact considered the majority of his grass roots supporters to be “sectarian.” In any event, there were so few of them later on, and so many leadership positions, that

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hardly anyone from the traditional milieu of the KPD who wished to be active in the SED could remain down at the rank-and-file level.29 Naturally, these figures are not representative as a whole, but when twothirds of a tradition are no longer mobilized within a traditional milieu, then this poses a question for broader dimensions as well, and must be examined.30 A countercheck indicates concerted efforts at persuasion. Of twelve SED members, three were in an organization affiliated with the NSDAP (all organizations more or less obligatory), five served in the war for a lengthy period, particularly on the eastern front against the Soviet Union, and none deserted to the other side. Two men who recruited their spouses for the party were professional soldiers (and were three years in Soviet captivity) or spent the entire war working in the armaments industry exempted from active duty as indispensable personnel. Among the SED members in our group of respondents, as far as can be ascertained from our interviews, no one had been an active Nazi. One can sum up by stating that, as indicated by this group, the SED was not a traditional leftwing party, yet was also above average in its degree of immunity against former active Nazis. Rather, the SED was a popular party of a new type. It gathered together a majority of individuals who had previously not been political, or had been “reorientated,” under the authoritarian leadership of a small Communist minority, along with an actively involved minority from the old Social Democrats. Yet that minority accounted for a majority of the politically experienced cadre in the postwar period, and was tapped in particular to fill key positions in trade unions and industry. More than a tenth of our respondents had a history of harrowing experiences with Nazi terror and brutality involving incarceration in a prison or concentration camp, the persecution of Jews, or the murder of family members. With similar frequency, some member of their family had been under arrest at one time or another (usually for a short period). Almost half of those who directly experienced Nazi terror later joined the SED. The number of persons who suffered particularly as a result of the consequences of the war—due to the death of their spouse or an important reference person, traumatic war experiences, more than three years in captivity as a POW, or as a result of the expulsion of the family from the East—was larger (about one-third of all respondents). Most of the others were bombed out, losing everything. There was hardly anyone who emerged from the war unscathed. A sixth had to grapple with the longterm consequences of denazification, while many others in families who would probably have had to face denazification in the West were in fact spared that ordeal.31 There is a conspicuously small number of soldiers who were POWs in Soviet captivity32; this element deserves careful examination because it

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Table 4 Politics: 36 life-histories from an industrial town in Saxony (1987)

Parents N Average age of respondents Parents/self (+ spouse) before 1945 Nazi KPD SPD Nazi repression experienced personally or in family including: threat of persecution as Jews oneself arrested/ concentration camp “euthanasia” War Military or other service obligation badly wounded/trauma loss/death of spouse death of other family members expulsion (self or family) 1939–45 affected relatively little Postwar period POW west/east denazification: family affected permanent consequences death/status Politics after 1945 bloc parties SED SED party functionary full-timeg trade union functionaryh full-time religious or church-connected reports on political conflicts and discriminationi insecurity or anxiety during interview pronounced criticism of food supply situation

Lower Middle Classa 12 70 2/2+3 HJ — 1/— 4

Working-Class Male 12 68.5

Female 12 70

1/2+5 HJ —/2+3 HJ 1/1 2/— 5/2 6/2 6

3

2 1b

1c 1d

9 2 2/1 3 1 1

10 2 — 2 1 1

3 2 4/3 4 1 2

5w/2e

10w

—

4

1

1

—/3

—/1

1/1

4e 1 — — 3 (1) 8..

7f 4 2 3 — 2..

5 4 2 2 1 4

5

7

3

7

2

6j

5

6k

7

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Table 4 (cont.) Politics: 36 life-histories from an industrial town in Saxony (1987) a

A third of these are female. Parents’ occupational categories: four independent craftsmen, four (small) entrepreneurs, four civil servants (one at a higher level). b Together with parents and a sister who survived, interned 1945 in the concentration camp Theresienstadt. c Imprisoned 1935–45 due to activity on behalf of the Communist Party. d Father, who suffered from a nervous illness contracted in World War I; killed in 1941. e Three who are independently employed, two of whom joined the LDPD to protect their jobs politically. All were representatives in local government for this party and the CDU, in some cases over a longer period. In addition, a theology student who resigned from the CDU in 1950 because he felt the party was no longer credible. f One of whom later quit the party in 1946. g Along with Ludwig Haber and Pia Diemer, included here are an apprentice mechanic (Hitler Youth), who became a higher-ranking police official and later personnel officer in industry after the war, and a female textile worker, who later became an editor. h Including a former teacher (dismissed from his job twice in 1946 and 1956) and a former member of the NSDAP who served as head of the union in the plant section; a technician enthusiastic about Hitler Youth who served as chairman of the grievance committee of the local trade union; the daughter of a baker, later a typist in a plant trade union committee— after a commercial apprenticeship and after joining the SED, at the age of about forty, she became a plant officer for culture and social affairs; a female textile worker, who was persuaded to become chairperson of a plant trade union committee at the age of forty-five, and then also joined the SED. i Along with those cases mentioned in the text, others from the 1940s and 1950s: someone who quit the SED after being robbed by auxiliary police during the period of heavy hoarding; the deputy chief of a local branch of the NSDAP 1944–45, denounced to the Red Army, who spent five years interned in Buchenwald without being able to inform his family of his whereabouts, and died on the day of his “release with no further incrimination” according to the certificate of release; someone denounced in 1951 as “on friendly terms with war criminals,” resulting in dismissal from the job—after the individual who denounced her fled to the West a few weeks later, this person was reinstated; a village mayor (1920–45, SPD majority in the Weimar Republic), psychologically crushed as a result of five years denazification internment due to membership in the NSDAP; a plant “mistakenly” dispossessed on June 17, 1953 (Berlin uprising), and later returned to its owner after a complaint was lodged; coworker sentenced in the 1950s to a long term in prison for having told a political joke; someone dismissed from a high-ranking occupational position due to a public statement referring to the constitutional guarantee of freedom of religion (daughter’s confirmation in 1958); a dispute between a pastor and a CDU mayor in the late 1950s regarding the Jugendweihe initiation ceremony. j Including a woman where this is due to her advanced age. k Including three middle-level and high-level white-collar workers, the latter SED functionaries.

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most likely had an impact on later migration to the West. The contents of reports on captivity suggest the likelihood that this experience acted to undergird or strengthen longer-term structures of perception in the EastWest conflict as a result of the presence in the GDR of former POWs who had spent time in Western captivity. In distinct contrast with comparable West German interviews, reports here about captivity in camps of the Western allies are generally grim; frequently there is the comment that as a prisoner from the Soviet zone, you were not supposed to be released at all or only after considerable delay, and that you had to trick the British or Americans in order to make it back home. Since that time, hardly any of the respondents had had contact with American, British, or French nationals; in their minds, Western integration is associated with Western internment. The low attrition rate in political organization in the postwar period is striking; only in the very early postwar era did it appear to be practicable to leave a party once one had joined.33 Whoever remained in one of the stagnating bloc* parties was almost invariably given some function or political post. In the SED, it was much easier to remain a passive party member. However, the party also provided an array of activities and functions for members at the grass roots level; in our group, these functions were taken over largely by persons who had not come from a traditional left-wing background (namely, in six of eight cases). The opposite is true only in the case of two respondents; however, they boasted the highest level of political or professional advancement in the entire group. In this generation, trade union functions proved to be the vestibule, as it were, for this process of political reeducation via participation: in the matrix of union activity, nonpolitical individuals, members of coalition classes, as well as former Social Democrats and National Socialists were able to find an arena where they could be active and show their constructive outlook in a demonstrative way. Membership in a church during the transition period was generally interpreted as a sign of opposition; it correlates with social decline or stagnation, except in the case of clergymen. Even today it is still a source of support for criticism of the dominant political forces, but the lines here are not clearly separated. In individual cases, one can also find an orthodox believer who belongs to the SED, or someone who practices religion although unaffiliated with any church. Indeed, many emphasized that they felt repulsion for the church as a result of its narrow-minded position on the question of the compatibility between confirmation and state secular initiation ceremonies (Jugendweihe), and by the conservative behavior of the clergy in the postwar period. Most took advantage of the now * The bloc parties in the GDR were the several small noncommunist parties such as the CDU and LDPD, under the absolute tutelage of the SED.—TRANS.

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voluntary payment of church taxes to formally withdraw from the church, generally in the first ten years after the end of the war. Some had already taken that step during the Third Reich. But it would be false to construct a two-camp theory of the SED versus the church. That would not jibe with the large number of generationtypical examples of state-conformist thinking in support of law and order among nonpolitical individuals and opponents of the state party. And there is likewise far too high a level of criticism of the hopelessness and mounting problems in the supply of everyday consumer goods out in the industrial province—criticism that does not come only from outside, but like the reports on political discrimination after 1945, also from the ranks of party members. It is precisely the group showing the greatest amount of active involvement in the SED and the highest degree of advancement—namely, proletarian males—which also demonstrates the most confidence and ego strength in their behavior during interview conversations. They are willing to talk about critical political aspects or difficult complications in their biography; there is also a tendency in this direction among the upwardly mobile who have refused to get actively involved in politics. Conversely, apprehension vis-à-vis the new situation of a taperecorded interview with a West German is greatest among those who experienced powerful political shifts and changes in their long-term social perspective (they are most frequent among the lower middle class). Such apprehensiveness is also pronounced among SED members, often female, who do not stem from a left-wing background, recollect that their youth in the Third Reich was unpolitical and who then assumed rank-and-file functions in the party in the postwar period. Overall, the most important determinant features for attitude and behavior in our respondent group are the dimensions of familial ties and the dynamics of social mobility, whose peaks of advance and troughs of decline are consistently associated with political attitudes. Long-standing traditions, accepted and developed as matter-of-fact and obvious, tend to be the rare exception in our group. The great majority of respondents can be characterized by processes of social adaptation; in the majority of cases, this was underpinned and rewarded by an expansion in their array of skills and responsibilities. Even in these generations, shaken and likewise awakened by history, the intensity of ideological overconformity or resistivity (Resistenz—see the Glossary) has yielded to an amalgam: a more or less depressed sense of pride in achievement. It is a sense of pride to the extent that one’s own level of life and social security now contrast with a poverty-striken and unstable family situation experienced as a child and the ravages of World War II. Yet at the same time, this pride is tempered by a feeling of depression, because the economistic credo of the generation of (re)construction after the war has been undermined by con-

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tinuing, often even increasingly more opaque and complex economic problems—as well as by the frame of reference of technological and economic development in capitalism. This is distressing to many in the GDR who are confronted with making some sort of sense out of their lives, since the positive message of the older generation increasingly seems backward-looking and bound up with the past, while their perspective on the future lacks clarity and can hardly serve as a legacy to be passed on to subsequent generations. Siegfried Homann replied to my question as to what the future would bring with a disarming shrug: “Don’t have the slightest idea.” And a high-placed clergyman told me about a confidential conversation he had had a short time before with a leading propagandist in the SED district there: they had agreed that there are two minorities in the GDR, namely, devout Christians and dedicated Marxists; these two groups ought to talk to one another more frequently. Shades of Don Camillo and Peppone, but without the backing of Rome or the Resistance.

The Specificity of Experience Individual attempts at interpretation as well as quantitative comparisons suggest that cohesion factors in the history of the GDR cannot be reduced to one common denominator. This contradicts the formal staging of the public sphere, engineered to create the impression of a programmatic unity between the government and the people; it also is in contradiction with the idea, widespread in Western circles, that the societies in the Soviet bloc are held together largely by the glue of special privileges (for the political elite) and fear (within a people that is actually conceived to be opposed to the regime). But within the domains of local and industrial everyday life, a far more differentiated structure composed of experiences and attitudes emerges among older blue-collar workers, white-collar personnel, and their representative elites—domains which our model investigation was designed to probe. That structure can be best grasped by complementary constellations of experience types. There are very few elements of political consensus; moreover, it would be possible to establish them as true elements of this type only by means of representative scientific studies. Nonetheless, one can identify certain consensual elements even within our small group of respondents; however, due to the lack of concrete alternatives, they are not linked (as in Western societies) with attitude patterns relevant to action, but rather remain floating in a kind of passive arbitrariness. For that reason, one comes closer to realities in the GDR via more complex and less quantifiable experience types; it is these which are operative in everyday commu-

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nication, and their interaction provides a conditioning framework and sounding board for politics. Let me briefly discuss several of these consensual elements in which experiences and contemporary attitudes merge. The paramount explicit norm found cutting across all camps and social situations is “peace.”34 It is associated (though not regularly, surprisingly often for the Western observer) with the “nationalization” of industry—even by opponents of the SED.35 That nationalization, for its part, is almost never called into question in a fundamental sense—in stark contrast, say, with the drying up of private initiative in the services sector—even if many frequently voice criticism of problematic aspects of its structure and performance. There is also widespread popular appreciation for the system of social security, especially job security, the massive state subsidies for rents, public transport, and a few symbolic basic foods36 as well as the cost-free system of medical care. Less regularly mentioned, but nonetheless frequently noted and high on the scale of appreciation, are elements such as the various possibilities for learning additional specialist skills, housing construction over the past two decades, the working atmosphere in industrial plants, and, often enough, encounters with Soviet citizens (generally outside the GDR), who are discovered to be surprisingly likable or highly competent people. As a rule, the residual minimum consensus is expressed in the formula: “No one goes hungry here.” If, to make matters more concrete, this complex is counterposed to images of unemployment, homelessness, beggars, and tramps in West German cities, what emerges is a compound of social solidarity and appreciation for the discipline and order imposed by the state. Appreciation for such “achievements” is almost never associated with active or political attributes. It is true that a large proportion of the older generation retains the definite feeling that they “pulled the horsecart out of the mud.” That sense of pride is often concretized by reference to personal involvement in the construction of certain buildings, for example, or participation in efforts that led to the achievement of some specific technical advance. Yet except in the case of a minority of party apparatchiks, this feeling of pride is seldom if ever linked with a personal memory of having participated in bringing about one of those general political or social “achievements.” They all just happened at some time or other, or one day they were simply there. Similarly, one never comes across any musings about political alternatives in the GDR in these conversations, even in the case of party functionaries. In any event, there are never any ideas articulated about alternatives in respect to political personnel, and only in very rare instances when it comes to conceptual dimensions of politics. Seen from the social base, the leadership has attributes of Olympian divinity: the realm on high is a plane totally removed,

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of fateful importance, and approached only via the agency of petition— generally with the often successful request for assistance to protect oneself from lower-level bureaucrats.37 In our interviews, there is only a single instance of the idea that there might be ways to obtrude upon debate and discussion at the level of the political leadership, and that such meddling could be meaningful—voiced by a higher-echelon party intellectual.38 Any and all choices regarding changes in political personnel appear to be the prerogative of the gods up above, and it is useless to worry about such matters. Anyway, only ex post facto do you find out whether there were in fact any alternatives. No matter whether one rejects or trusts the middle-level and higher echelons of the political leadership, it is part of a world detached, “above and beyond.” Many speak about politics using meteorological metaphors, and concentrate efforts on weatherproofing their immediate life sphere and maneuvering it into a sunny spot, so to speak, while commenting that “the men up there at the top probably know what they’re doing!” Along with this weariness of politically creative imagination in a socialist Biedermeier,* political practice likewise lacks a potential for the kind of consensus that is an essential ingredient in Western societies—namely, general political participation by means of a formal opposition.39 Nonetheless, fantasies do exist. But they are not directed toward the Olympian heights of the regime; rather, they soar up over and beyond the borders, generally to the West, more rarely in an eastwardly direction.40 Among our older interviewees, if they commented at all on the topic of political perspectives,41 those fantasies generally condensed into the vision of a proletarian utopia of convergence: the affluence of the West combined with the security of the East. The fact that the goal of mass prosperity in socialism—which aimed after all at liberating the forces of production from the fetters of capitalist relations of production—is fantasized particularly in the form of a combination coalesced with those same capitalist production relations points up the presence of a subliminal dimension of consensus associated with the “generation of socialist construction,” namely, its pervasive economism, now become a dilemma. Unlike developments in the West, where the main postwar generations had also fled from the ravages of the war and political confusion, seeking refuge first in economic reconstruction and then far beyond, economism in the GDR dominated the greater part of the superstructure right from the start. The media, the arts, and politics have been speaking principally in economic dialects at least from the time the construction of socialism was proclaimed at the * The reference is to the pre-1848 period that has become a synonym in German discourse for complacent, uninspired, insular, petit-bourgeois values and life-style and ended in a revolutionary upheaval.—TRANS.

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beginning of the 1950s, if not earlier. Moreover, the tension between that economistic thrust and the cultivation of a national heritage (sorted and graded in terms of Russophilic criteria) during the Ulbricht era has since disappeared. In the meantime, everyday language and discourse, at least in the older generation, are marked by this economistic narrowing, and nothing in our interviews was able to escape the depressing translation into its ubiquitous idiom: hobby gardening and vacation trips are seen in terms of economics, love stories become stories about housing, kinship relations take on the quality of foreign trade, illnesses refer to the tensions between the collective and the economic plan, or underscore snags in the provision of raw materials. Dialogue between the generations dies away in the zerosum game between the introduction of the “year of the baby” (a paid year off for child care) and the relative destitution of the old-age pensioners. The people have seized upon the materialism of their vanguard, idealistically transfigured, and given that materialism the unavoidable quality of a slave language within the frame of reference of the relative prosperity of the West. Its discourse ranges from talk about waiting periods for car delivery (currently [1988] fourteen years) to the lack of hard currency, state-run “Intershops” for Western goods (with Western cash), production backlogs, bonus rights, price rises, and supplementary social security (in order to prevent one’s living standard from plummeting to the minimum for survival in old age). Imagination and future prospects suffocate under this avalanche of an everyday sphere that is weighted down with economism—the nemesis of a programmatic perspective narrowed by the strictures of economistic programmatic vision, and this under difficult economic conditions to boot, conditions which lend an almost transcendent quality to numerous innocuous everyday wishes and desires. Choked by economism, the value consciousness of young people, schooled in socialist ideals and revolutionary or antifascist heroes, is alienated. That youth, better educated, more specialized, and less motivated than their parents or grandparents, now needs an experimental, reflective, and expressive culture and political elbowroom that is more than a mere playground. In the GDR, there has never been a social and historical configuration of generational counterpoint such as appeared in the form of political conflict between generations in the West German middle class during the 1960s. The increasingly alienated sons of middle-class families only rarely had any chance in the early GDR, and generally sought their future in the West. Already beginning in the 1950s, the educational revolution in the “working” classes mobilized anyone who was so inclined. But the ranks of political representatives of the system were heavily interspersed with individuals who had suffered through the ordeal of Nazi concentra-

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tion camps, and a number of leftist Jewish émigrés returned from the West, while those who had compromised themselves retreated into the anonymity of quiet performance of their appointed function. Whoever rebelled against the émigrés back from the Russian East or “big brother” soon ended up in the West—or in pastures far less pleasant. The West German “special path” (Sonderweg) of 1968—a revolt among youth against the cultural continuity extending down from the Third Reich— had no potentially explosive basis in the GDR, because here there had actually been an exchange (on both sides) in content, perspective, personnel, and social substratum. Nonetheless, the structures of politics and behavior in the GDR had a far greater continuity than in the West—as did the traditions of silent moral cowardice, political accommodation, and fellow traveling. There was no virulent opponent for a new generation to target, especially since the educational revolution had taken place earlier in the GDR, and had channeled its products into the offices—and not onto the streets. To that extent, this conflict has been deep-frozen in the GDR, and is now leading increasingly to a serious impasse in development. Against the backdrop of declining productivity rates and rising foreign debt, alarming symptoms in an economy dependent on the export of technology, that impasse is visible in many shapes and quarters: in a diluted and marginalized reservoir of creative potential, or in a reserve army of competent persons who prefer to remain workers, with more money and fewer frustrations, rather than accept greater responsibility—and this in a society programmed for advancement. And it is reflected in the ranks of spineless jellyfish who are propelled by the current into the objectively available higher posts—to the general annoyance even of the old guard of the leadership, which sees itself mirrored in these faceless countenances. Though the last antifascist victims in positions of political leadership still function as a source for legitimation and validation, the structurally dominant next generation, shaped by experience in Hitler Youth and reoriented in the Free German Youth movement in the GDR, finds that in the prevailing atmosphere of economism, its legitimacy is judged principally in terms of naked criteria of efficiency. It is that difference which now heralds the emergence in the GDR (also in the face of ongoing perestroika in the Soviet Union) of that question of double rupture in generations with which the Federal Republic was confronted at the end of the Adenauer era. This brings us back to the complementary configuration of experience of the principal postwar generation to the extent it is manifest in our material. What created and preserved its experience types? Are these experiences specific solely to this generation, because they are basically linked with unrepeatable historical conditions, or can they be generalized, so that they are transmittable in substance to younger generations?

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Without raising any claim to completeness or representativeness, I have tried to gain some understanding of coexistent but clearly differing experience types at the level of the social base—and of their general conditioning factors operative among individuals from the same age group and class. In conclusion, I will try once again to sketch these types, which deserve more precise delineation, in their attributes and interaction. First, there is the group of functionaries of the workers’ movement, especially the KPD, who were interned in prisons and concentration camps in the Third Reich for their political convictions, often for many years; in the postwar period, these persons were invested with a high level of existentially attested authority, even in the eyes of their political opponents—in a society composed largely of fellow travelers. In a disciplined manner, they accommodated for the most part to a line laid down by émigrés returning from Moscow and to the circumstances, but they were indispensable for the wider persuasive power of that line. Their number and qualifications, however, proved far too limited to fill the numerous leadership positions at the disposal of the SED in the postwar period, especially since the grass roots reservoir of left-wing tradition coming down from the Weimar Republic had been significantly reduced during fascism, and/or was only partially mobilized (or mobilizable) in the Soviet zone. For that reason, the ranks of lower-level functions closest to the base had to be occupied by new recruits who had embraced antifascist positions only after the demise of fascism. Regardless of their personal convictions—belief structures in which important emotional elements of their personal historical experience were more likely to be rationalized in a stereotypical form rather than fused with politics as part of their life history—in the eyes of others, they had to struggle objectively with the charge of opportunism, and were able to develop only rather limited powers of political persuasion themselves. With the stigmatizing of the majoritarian Social Democratic tradition of the left within the SED after 1948, that lack of existential authenticity became more acute, as did the constraint to replace them by functionaries whose special qualification was their youth or previous unpolitical past.42 Particularly if they were honest, they necessarily subordinated themselves to the political leadership, emulating time-tested antifascist models who had climbed rapidly up the ladder to higher-level functions. For that reason, we encountered a double generation of political leadership among political functionaries over the age of fifty in the GDR. Its older segment, bearing the marks and scars of fascism and Stalinism and shrinking rapidly in size since the 1960s, enjoys a political authority validated by personal biography. The larger mass of these functionaries over the age of fifty, however, do not represent either a left-wing or antifascist tradition rooted in their own experience; rather, these individuals are more versed in the skills of authoritarian submissiveness and fulfillment

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of assigned duties than in the ways of acquiring democratic leadership abilities. That is, the older generation today is increasingly an intermediate generation with secondarily derived authority—one which looks back to configurations of the 1930s and 1940s, but had little opportunity to develop a perspective of its own. In the light of the unquestioned obviousness of (re)construction and the existence of its state-socialist structure as a given fact, their self-image developed on the basis of a pronounced political discipline and intense efforts to fulfill their function; they were rewarded by an unexpected increase in their level of qualification and responsibility. This generation is hardworking and practical, but lacks confidence when confronted with new challenges, and reacts with dismay when the third and fourth postwar generations no longer embrace their specifically disciplined commitment to socialist construction as an obvious and unquestioned canon of duty in a socialized and socialist folk community (sozialistische Volksgemeinschaft). This uncritical stance of “accommodate, roll up your sleeves, and get to work” connects the political elites at the social base with the industrial elites; in the generation of socialist construction in industry, that stance can be linked with political commitment or allegiance in the sense of the SED—as well as with different forms of distancing or opposition. Quite often, this appears to be the arena of activity of those who came from a Social Democratic background and who, taxing their strength virtually to the breaking point, labored to help create a material society whose more special political contours they neither wished to espouse nor were able to shape. The involvement of men in the enterprise of socialist construction—and to some extent of working-class women as well—is thus not rooted primarily in political conviction and commitment. Instead, it derives in particular from (a) the opportunities for acquiring higher-level skills and responsibilities which exceeded youthful expectations, (b) earlier acquired habits of discipline, on the job and elsewhere, and (c) the structural gains of the working class in state-owned industry in respect to social security and working atmosphere. While workers were able to advance most especially in political terms in the immediate postwar period, and supervisory positions in industry were still largely occupied by members of the middle classes who had relevant job experience but few prospects for the future, the brain drain of the 1950s radically altered that situation. Now, likewise in all technical and organizational jobs, the dominant need was for upwardly mobile lower- and middle-management personnel. The upshot was that this overriding demand attracted two categories: those who had been active earlier on, as well as workers who had kept their reserve, cultivating their ethos of work and family in the private niches of the transitional society. The burdens born by this generation, associated with the need for additional occupational training and

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the internalization of structural problems of a planned economy, filled its members with pride, but often pushed them prematurely to the very limit of their possibilities. Along with the needs for specialization and differentiation inherent in the so-called scientific-technological revolution, this led to a more rapid turnover in generations within industry than in the political arena. Yet these successive generations are no longer distinguished by their presocialist discipline, unexpected social mobility, readiness for action derived from wartime experience, and high structural expectations regarding the future combined with a pronounced degree of personal modesty. It turns out that the industrial ethos of the generation of socialist (re)construction, its ability to shoulder burdens, and its level of gratification are all historically specific. Its fund of experience is little suited for transfer to the younger generation as a legacy capable of generating meaning and galvanizing motivation. In our control group, a minority of males and a majority of females failed to make any clear progress up the ladder either politically or occupationally. This rather surprising finding for a social-revolutionary transitional society should be underscored once again: the long-term trend shows few clear experiences of decline, but there are, both before and after 1945, short-term losses in status, generally political in origin, at least in part compensated during longer later phases. This suggests that the higher middle-class strata had largely disappeared from the state as a result of emigration or decidedly below-average reproduction patterns, at least here in the industrial province. One does at times still encounter the children of the middle-level and small-scale independently employed, who either stagnated in similar positions, or were placed in middle-level functions in industry, and whose small number of children followed this trend. By contrast, children from the educated middle class, in numerical terms at least just as large a group, were represented in our study only negligibly, and were found exclusively in top-level technical positions (except in the case of the clergy). Emigration from the province was probably very extensive in their case, especially since the larger proportion of civil servants and teachers were dismissed from their posts after the war. Two stagnant groups remain: the sons of artisans and workers who did not advance beyond the level of workers or lower-level white-collar personnel, and a large number of females with a similar final occupational positioning. Given the preponderant tendency toward advancement among workers of this generation, it is not surprising to note the particular presence of political braking factors underlying long-term social processes of stagnation among males. The two most important such factors are denazification and a kind of political withdrawal among skilled workers, some of whom are quite highly qualified and disciplined. This stance

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points either to difficult personal experiences with the Soviet occupier or to early shaping within a Social Democratic milieu, inducing the individual later on to cultivate a detached attitude of impregnability via fulfillment of duty. A comparable Resistenz based on Christian motives or the experience of expulsion would also be conceivable, but is not reflected in our data. What is of interest within the framework of this typological sketch is the fact that the two stagnant types—to which the GDR, by the way, owes a great debt of duty-bound manual labor and effort—do not appear in the following generation. They are bound to previous conditions and have a long-term impact only on this generation; in some cases, their children experienced very steep paths of upward advancement. The latter, as we have shown, is also true in the case of females, and not just for the minority belonging to the group of those politically dispossessed or disappointed. The most evident single factor molding the image of this generation of women in the industrial province is the special burden they bear: the consequences of war that can never be compensated, especially the loss of their actual or potential spouse. This often involved them in complicated family arrangements (longer dependence on their parents or taking a hand in the rearing of children, and often a combination of the two); these tended to restrict their occupational engagement in the job market, generally an economic necessity since the 1950s. On the average, they brought few or no skills to their jobs, so that only after getting better training did they reach the average male starting position. As a rule, further advancement up the ladder was limited by the fact that their employment came to a premature end or was reduced in scope because they returned at a later age to dedicate themselves to a second or third phase of family life—especially nurturant functions such as looking after older family members in need of care, who themselves had been of assistance to such women at an earlier stage, or taking care of men who had fallen victim to stress on the job. Thus, women of this generation tended to represent a reserve force for lower-skilled jobs; likewise, it was they who had absorbed a substantial proportion of the existential burden resulting from the consequences of the war and the revolution. Yet their only recompense was via the opportunities afforded their children for better training and advancement. Their daughters were little disposed to accept the historically overaccentuated double role their mothers had played—a reserve work force and a private buffer for social crises—as a model. Nonetheless, they may well have profited from their mothers’ hard work and competence, learning a lesson in more dogged and stubborn self-confidence. Our investigation did not examine the question of the experiences of younger generations in the GDR and the attitudes they derived from this; we must remain silent on that aspect. The typological hypotheses pre-

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sented here are no more than a tentative sketch based on a limited amount of exemplary material; further historical questions are raised that must be sharpened using representative sources. There is little doubt that various emendations will have to be made in the future. A legacy of historically specific experiences, essentially nontransferable, held together the generation of socialist (re)construction that remained in the industrial province. That fund of experience, coupled with comparatively rudimentary elements of political consensus, but resting upon a foundation of inherited discipline, habituation to political leadership, and familial moderation, facilitated a high measure of social complementarity and achievement. Yet these experiences raise questions not only about the past. Rather, they point to the presence of a gap in the normative transfer of experience in the GDR after the departure from the scene of the generation of socialist construction; that gap can be overcome only when successive generations—within the matrix of a culture that is now gradually opening up— learn to process their own experience and values. If this process is further impeded and postponed by the lingering political legacy of authoritarianism and economism, it is likely that there will be a substantial decrease in social cohesion and motivation. It is hard for outsiders to predict the substantive consequences that could emerge from a bold new direction in culture in the GDR. To judge by their degree of anchoring in basic consensus, it is improbable that such a shift would do much to shake four main supporting pillars of this social system: the tendency toward a relatively egalitarian society based on achievement, the prerequisite of the socialization of industry, the passive respect for the general power configuration in the wake of World War II—and the wish for peace.

Notes I wish to express my gratitude to the chairman of the State Council of the German Democratic Republic, from whom I requested permission for carrying out this investigation, and the Central Institute for German History of the Academy of Sciences of the GDR, which assisted us in making some of our contacts and was otherwise helpful. I would also like to thank the border authorities of the GDR for respecting our request to take our survey materials out of the country unchecked. My sincere thanks to the Volkswagen Foundation for its financial support of this project, and to my colleagues at the FernUniversität in Hagen, who allowed us—on short notice—to go off on longer trips to the field for research. I also owe a debt of gratitude to the Wissenschaftskolleg zu Berlin, in whose cordial atmosphere I worked on the analysis and interpretation of these materials, and where I was able early in 1988 to present portions of this study for the first time for discussion and commentary. I would also like to take this opportunity to thank the many friends who read an earlier draft of this first groping, partial

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analysis and made numerous suggestions for improvement; let me mention only the names of Dorothee Wierling and Alexander von Plato as representative of the others. The number of offices, party and trade union functionaries, church and religious organizations, and so forth which helped us in setting up contacts with interviewees is far too extensive for me to name them individually; yet without their aid, an investigation of this type in the GDR would hardly have been feasible. Above all else, however, I would like to thank our 150 respondents, who gave us between two and seven hours of their time and their trust, and who told us about their lives. 1. An earlier version of this paper appeared in BIOS 1 (1988): 19–66. Some preliminary findings of the project have since been published in English in an exploratory sketch by Dorothee Wierling, “Is There an East German Identity? Aspects of a Social History of the Soviet Zone/German Democratic Republic,” Tel Aviver Jahrbuch für deutsche Geschichte 19 (1990): 193–207. Since this article was first published, additional relevant publications are Lutz Niehammer, Alexander von Plato, and Dorothee Wierling, Die volkseigene Erfahrung. Eine Archäologie des Lebens in der Industrieprovinz der DDR (Berlin, 1991); Alexander von Plato and Wolfgang Meinicke, Alte Heimat—neue Zeit. Flüchtlinge, Umgesiedelte, Vertriebene in der SBZ/DDR (Berlin, 1991), 85–265. 2. See the three volumes of the study edited by me and Alexander von Plato, Lebensgeschichte und Sozialkultur im Ruhrgebiet 1930 bis 1960 (hereafter LUSIR 1–3) (Berlin and Bonn, 1983–85). 3. For statistical purposes, nine out of ten employed persons in the GDR are classified as working class, because blue-collar and white-collar workers (including those in civil service positions and employed in organizations) are counted together. See, for example, Wolfgang Schneider et al., Zur Entwicklung der Klassen und Schichten in der DDR (Berlin [GDR], 1977), 113ff., and Statistisches Taschenbuch der DDR 1987 (Berlin [GDR], 1987), 35. In contrast, estimates and calculations reflecting occupational realities in the GDR can be found in Dieter Voigt, Werner Voss, and Sabine Meck, Sozialstruktur der DDR (Darmstadt, 1987), 128ff. (44 percent workers, of these 59 percent skilled; that proportion has tripled since the 1950s); note also the excellent bibliography there. 4. About a fourth are so-called Umsiedler, that is, “resettled Germans” (expellees). A bit fewer than two-fifths of all respondents were members of the SED (among adults in the GDR, the official figure for party membership is 18.5 percent) or of a religious community. 5. See, for example, the studies by American sociologists based on oral information: Marilyn Rueschemeyer, Professional Work and Marriage: An East-West Comparison (London, 1985), 112ff. (“Does socialism make a difference?”); Robin Ostow, “Being Jewish in the Other Germany: An Interview with Thomas Eckert,” New German Critique, no. 88 (1986): 73ff., and Ostow, Jews in Contemporary East Germany: The Children of Moses in the Land of Marx (London, 1989). 6. One of the main associated difficulties is the official requirement for obtaining permission to conduct any survey in the GDR. Evidently this is not the case in respect to materials written down by an individual him/herself, so that there is broad encouragement for the writing of autobiographies. However, the authorities recommend that such autobiographical materials should follow a suggested

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outline, which acts strongly to reduce and relativize the subjective factor. When interpreting such “written oral history” in the future, one ought to be careful to bear in mind these guideline suggestions of the Kulturbund (a number of which are in fact quite sensible). See Hans-Jürgen Rach, “Erinnerungen zum Alltagsleben proletarischer Familien vor 1945. Hinweise und Anregungen für das Schreiben von Autobiographien,” Kultur und Lebensweise, no. 2 (1979) and no. 1 (1980): 76ff. 7. References in Wolfgang Emmerich, Kleine Literaturgeschichte der DDR (Darmstadt and Neuwied, 1981), 137ff., esp. 196ff. 8. Cf. especially Maxie Wander, “Guten Morgen, du Schöne”. Frauen in der DDR. Protokolle, with a foreword by Christa Wolf (Darmstadt and Neuwied, 1978); Wolfgang Herzberg, So war es. Lebensgeschichten zwischen 1900 und 1980. Nach Todbandprotokollen (based on recorded interviews) (Halle, 1985 [Darmstadt-Neuwied, 1987]). A similar intention was evidently also present in Gabriele Eckart, So sehe ick die Sache. Protokolle aus der DDR. Leben im Havelländischen Obstanbaugebiet (Cologne, 1984), though only selected parts of this were able to appear in the GDR. There is nothing comparable to an open debate such as in Teresa Toranska, Die da oben. Polnische Stalinisten zum Sprechen gebracht (Cologne, 1987). 9. See handbooks such as Voigt et al., Sozialstruktur der DDR, or Ralf Rytlewski and Manfred Opp de Hipt, Die Deutsche Demokratische Republik in Zahlen 1945/49–1980 (Munich, 1987); and studies such as Horst Barthel, Die wirtschaftlichen Ausgangsbedingungen der DDR (Berlin [GDR], 1979), or Wolfgang Zank, Wirtschaft und Arbeit in Ostdeutschland 1945–1949 (Munich, 1987). 10. For topical syntheses, see Dietrich Staritz, Geschichte der DDR 1949– 1985 (Frankfurt am Main, 1985); Hermann Weber, Geschichte der DDR (Munich, 1985); Rolf Badstübner et al., Geschichte der Deutschen Demokratischen Republik (Berlin [GDR], 1981). See also Rolf Badstübner and Heinz Heitzer, eds., Die DDR in der Übergangsperiode (Berlin [GDR], 1982); Hermann Weber, ed., Parteiensystem zwischen Demokratie und Volksdemokratie. Dokumente und Materialien zum Funktionswandel der Parteien und Massenorganisationen in der SBZ/DDR 1945–1950 (Cologne, 1982). A subtle guide to the existing literature is Hermann Weber, Die DDR 1945–1986 (Munich, 1988), 105ff. 11. On Western research, see Staritz, Geschichte der DDR; on Eastern research, see Peter Hübner, “Forschungen zur Sozialgeschichte der DDR. Arbeiterklasse” (correspondence study unit, FernUniversität Hagen) (Hagen, 1988– 89), and special numbers of journals, such as Jahrbuch für Geschichte 31 (1984). 12. On the state of research, see Gerd Meyer, “Frauen in den Machthierarchien der DDR, oder: Der lange Weg zur Parität,” Deutschland-Archiv 19 (1986): 294ff.; Christa Kessler, “Frauenrolle und Frauenalltag in der DDR,” Soziologische Revue 10 (1987): 149ff. (special issue no. 2, Frauen, ed. Ilona Ostner). 13. See, for example, Jörg Roesler, Die Herausbildung der sozialistischen Planwirtschaft in der DDR (Berlin [GDR], 1978). 14. All names and occasionally other references have been altered to preserve anonymity. [The city is now once again Chemnitz.—TRANS.] 15. To my knowledge, there are no figures on the number of veteran Commu-

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nists in the period after the end of the war. At the end of the Weimar Republic, the KPD had a membership, highly fluctuating and made up largely of young people, numbering approximately 230,000; of these, only a minority could be considered the political hard core. That hard core was probably reduced by about a third due to persecution in the Third Reich and emigration. In the Soviet zone, where the KPD had already organized 3 percent of the population in less than a year and the SED succeeded in recruiting more than 10 percent of the population as members within a period of two years from its founding in early 1946, the still remaining veteran Communists probably constituted far less than 0.5 percent of the total population (though old-time SPD members accounted for in excess of 2 percent of the population). The youngest of those still alive are now in their midseventies. 16. For a detailed analysis of this complex, see Frank Thomas Stößel, Positionen und Strömungen in der KPD/SED 1945–1954, 2 vols. (Cologne, 1985), 557ff.; on the associated area, cf. Martin Jänicke, Der dritte Weg (Cologne, 1964). 17. This is my own interpretation, based on impressions of his personality. Ludwig Haber expressed another view, one which assumes a rather sinister and mysterious psychological motivation among the elite leadership as well as the grass roots level in the party. Although I cannot accept this as correct or convincing, it is understandable as a rationalization of his bitterness in an apparent attempt to gloss matters over. Haber himself suspects, namely, that the party leaders hinted to local party members (virtually simultaneously with his fall from grace) that it was likely he would soon be rehabilitated; the latter then treated him as a high-level functionary who had been “temporarily retired,” as it were—which he obviously was not. I will try below to gain a deeper understanding of his experience from his own words, based on a less conspiratorial view of party intentions. 18. The former plant manager of a state-owned firm, Siegfried Homann (SED member), who will be introduced later below, stated the following regarding the functions of a party secretary in the plant: “The secretary takes part in all meetings of management. There is never a general meeting of the plant management without the presence of a party secretary or the heads of the plant union; that never happens. The office immediately above the party secretary is the district headquarters; they have a secretary for the section of the city, and those secretaries ask for information from the plant. Things that have to be carried out, stuff of a political nature, like meetings, and what topics will be discussed—the district headquarters determines all that, and the party secretary’s job is just to carry out orders. Then, every day, or every other day at our plant, he has an office hour, and anyone can go to talk to him, whether it’s a problem with housing, whatever. That’s where the question is directed to. Let me be honest with you: I’d never want a job like that. Not even for five thousand marks a month. It’s a job where you have to work like a foot scraper cleaning away the crap. You see, he can’t do the job the way he’d like to. There are things a secretary can explain and clear up, ’cause they were organized in such a stupid way. Things where he can say: they’ll be told how to do it right. There are cases the secretary can look into. Then he calls for those responsible, but privately. Here we don’t have a practice of giving a guy a lot of shit (to put it in blunt language) in public; that’s really unusual, and besides it’s stupid, makes no sense. If you try to shout at people, telling them what they should think, that’s senseless. That’s not how it’s done. They’re invited in.

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It’s a private discussion just between the two of them, and then the person has to correct whatever is wrong. So the party secretary really has his work cut out for him. I wouldn’t be in his shoes for five thousand a month. (Interviewer: So what kind of people do that job?) Well, mainly guys who were well trained in the party, who’ve been educated that way from the time they were born. They have to be from a good family background, be loyal and committed, and have a shrewd political sense—that’s something they need too. Well, like I said, you really gotta have a lot of love for it if you want to do that kind of a job.” 19. His father, a metalworker, was the head of the SPD in the town council. They were the strongest party in this industrial village. In 1933 he was also removed by the Nazis from his position, and for a few years after that remained without a job. The whole family suffered from political discrimination and poverty, while the local SPD head, a civil servant at the town hall, joined the NSDAP and kept his post. However, in 1945 a strange political situation developed in town: though Siegfried Homann’s father was the unchallenged leader of the Social Democratic majority, he had grown weary; his experiences had worn him down. In any event, a veteran Communist who had returned from concentration camp became mayor, and he was replaced in turn after a little more than a year by a representative of the CDU. When the SPD and KPD were unified in the SED, Homann’s father was representative of the majority once again, but he did not become a member of the local party executive, which was supposed to be composed of equal numbers of leading Social Democrats and Communists. Instead, he was given a simple job as gardener at the hospital, and he died a few years later. During the early war years, he had tried in vain to convince his son, a sportsman and daredevil who found military life in the beginning rather enjoyable, that the war was senseless. In 1945, his son, after having been wounded three times, was more willing to listen. He suggested to his son that he join the KPD, but warned him against contemplating a career in politics. 20. Based on a comparison of several such careers, it is evident that despite Siegfried Homann’s appreciation for the Communists as leadership cadre distinguished by their antifascism, this path lay in the shadow cast by his Social Democratic background. The fact that after elimination of the factory committees— which in any event had little if any role to play in this cottage industry firm—he was sent into union work and then, when opportunity knocked, into technical management, indicates he was a worker whose competence was respected and utilized, but who was not deemed worthy of being entrusted with tasks of political leadership. Cf. the longitudinal study of ideological positions by HansJoachim Spranger, Die SED und der Sozialdemokratismus. Ideologische Abgrenzung in der DDR (Cologne, 1982). 21. I have dealt in greater detail with the relevant literature pertaining to methodological questions of interviewing, memory, and interpretation in “Fragen— Antworten—Fragen,” LUSIR 3, 392–445. 22. All through our interviews we got the impression that people in the GDR deal with their own medical problems and handicaps publicly in a more open and uninhibited way than in the Federal Republic. 23. Sieglinde Erger herself makes reference to her father’s melancholy disposition. 24. Let me point out once more that due to the extremely small number of

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expellees, we were dealing here with a group shaped in part by regional factors, and in part by special conditions. This section of the survey was conducted in suburbs of Karl-Marx-Stadt, which were formerly independent towns and characterized by a long-standing and established working-class milieu made up of local families. However, one of these suburbs contained a large plant, surrounded by a heavy blanket of secrecy, with a (presumably) very high percentage of expellees among its work force. Yet since we did not do any interviews in that area, the milieu of local families has been artificially enhanced vis-à-vis the actual reality. 25. Closer family refers here to the parents, brothers and sisters, spouses, and children of the interviewee. 26. This figure overaccentuates the finding, since the group contains two Catholic clergymen. Without this “distorting factor,” there were about ten children, which was still less than half the reproduction of corresponding couples. 27. The larger total of positive or negative instances (per group and time period) was divided by the smaller, yielding a value greater than 1. The + or − sign indicates whether positive or negative statements predominated. 28. This constitutes a weak point in the approach, since the birth of children— and other experiences related to children—were not taken into consideration due to the fact that it is extremely rare for them to be evaluated as a special event in the interview narrative. Thus, this statement must be taken together with or emended by that made earlier regarding the achievements of women in raising their children—since a woman’s self-esteem is also based to an appreciable extent on the evaluation of her children’s personal and social development—but that evaluation tends to be expressed in final overall assessments. 29. Our respondents include one woman who was awarded the Clara Zetkin Prize for her work in the goods distribution section of a plant, and was then able to buy a Japanese television set with the prize money. 30. It should be borne in mind that given the ruptures in continuity which had a particularly powerful impact on the political culture of the workers’ movement, it would be incorrect to assume that children normally continue on the path of their parents’ political orientation. The conflict between generations often led to the adoption of opposed political views, at least for a time. See the exemplary study by Michael Zimmermann, “Ausbruchshoffnung. Junge Bergleute in den Dreißiger Jahren,” LUSIR 1, 97ff. 31. Especially in the U.S. zone, where every adult wishing to obtain a rations card had to fill out a denazification form, which then frequently was checked against the available, nonlocal documentation that had been assembled. In contrast, denazification in the Soviet zone appears to have been carried out mainly by plant committees using personal files. This was a more porous and less rigorous procedure, particularly in the case of individuals without any capital or property and outside the civil service, given the general level of population mobility after the war. Thus, despite the severity and rigorousness of the purge directed against civil servants and persons with property (see Wolfgang Meinike, “Die Entnazifizierung in der sowjetischen Besatzungszone 1945 bis 1948,” Zeitschrift für Geschichtswissenschaft 32 [1984]: 968ff.), it is possible to accept as credible repeated references in our interviews to members of the NSDAP or SS from lower

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middle-class and working-class backgrounds who did not undergo any denazification, or were screened through an extremely unbureaucratic and relaxed procedure. 32. Of seventy-one male interviewees in our investigation, forty-one served militarily during the war; of these, some 80 percent were taken prisoner, twothirds in Western captivity, one-third in the East. This corresponds roughly to the total estimated figures for the war, according to which some 11 million Germans were taken prisoner, about 3.5 million of these by the Soviets; of the latter, approximately 2 million did not survive. Nonetheless, it is striking in our interviews that mention is often made of a period of POW captivity lasting several years in the West. 33. Strangely enough, we did not encounter any of the hundreds of thousands who were banned from the SED or dropped from its membership rolls, especially in the early 1950s (some 150,000 just as a result of the major party screening action carried out then; see Weber, Geschichte der DDR, 221). It is likely that these deletions from the membership list reflect or were motivated by high losses due to emigration. In addition, the lists probably included many persons who had died in the meantime and been found guilty back then of the sin of “Social Democraticism.” It was likewise difficult for us to locate any still-active former Social Democrats. Finally, it is possible that one or another respondent felt ashamed and consciously concealed a gap in his party membership. 34. Though this cannot be firmed up and made more precise on the basis of such an investigation, I have the impression from the interviews that this goal in the GDR is totally uncontested, and more durable and intense than in the Federal Republic, where it also tends to shift to highest priority for the population during situations when the peace seems threatened. It is not only a platform of unspecific agreement, so to speak, with the political leadership, but above all else an expression of the smaller distance between World War II and experience in the GDR— where the extremely heavy burdens resulting from the consequences of the war were borne and felt by everyone far longer than in the West. 35. The usual argument is that the danger of war declines with the elimination of weapons profiteers. 36. This primary segment of the consensus, which equates socialism with virtually cost-free housing, essential foods, and mass transport (albeit relatively uniform in type and limited in quality), seriously restricts the latitude for economic reforms, since such subsidies consume a large portion of the national budget; as a result, there is stagnation in attempts to supply more differentiated needs. 37. Personal petitions are as widespread in the GDR as the practice of letters to the editor in the Soviet Union. Such petitions are directed to town and district councils, and especially to the chairman of the State Council (i.e., E. Honecker) as supreme ombudsman. For the citizenry, they function as an instrument against the immobility of the bureaucracy, because unlike complaints addressed to the bureaucracy, they result in responses that attempt to provide reasons; for the party, they serve as a seismograph recording the concerns of the citizens, similar to abstention votes during elections. District party leaders periodically request to be informed by government offices about the number, origin, and topic of personal petitions. The success of petitions to the State Council—which range from personal discrimination complaints to requests for the delivery of a gas heater to

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someone sick with rheumatism or a permit for repairing a church roof—depends on the stubborn persistence of the petitioner. Since they are first routinely channeled for confirmation to the specific relevant office that has as yet taken no action, ofttimes initially all they generate are excuses. When repeated, the result for the lower-level office appears to be more unpleasant—in any event, citizens quite often get what they want on the second or third try. Many citizens attribute success on this path (via detour) through official channels, traveled by tens of thousands, to the personal intervention of the head of state himself, and talk about this service rendered by the government as if it were a personal gift by “the general.” This functions to confirm a traditional, typical monarchical pattern of experience among the population. In the process, this extra bonus of antibureaucratic action is thus also siphoned off and redounds to the benefit of the SED, though characteristically that occurs less via decisions by the organs of the party closest to the social base; rather, its implementation is at the hands of the party chairman in his capacity as head of state. Against this backdrop, reform-minded individuals in the SED attach top priority to the introduction of an independent administrative court system. 38. Incidentally, one of the most striking marginal experiences associated with our field trips was the minimal presence of intellectuals in industrial districts and their general lack of familiarity with such areas. The concentration of political and intellectual (as well as reformist or oppositional) competence in the capital and in a small number of other urban centers takes on centralist proportions reminiscent of France. 39. This consensus machine in Western societies is closely bound up with social role playing and the symbolic representation of differences, and cannot be replaced by the balancing out of economic interests which presumably takes place internally between the various partners in bloc politics in the GDR. Yet one can now note attempts at a local level by bloc parties to strengthen their image. In part, such efforts adopt issues and work in political areas that are the traditional stamping ground of citizen action groups in the West, trying to take advantage of the greater mobility of the smaller yawls vis-à-vis the clumsy tanker SED, so to speak. 40. Among our respondents, they are far less frequently pro-Gorbachev than is the case among younger GDR intellectuals or Westerners—partially due to a wait-and-see attitude when it comes to the international political climate, and in part for economic reasons, because in this regard the Soviet Union seems to be in greater need of reform than the GDR. The associated cultural and democratic impulses released appear to be less important in the eyes of members of the generation of socialist (re)construction. However, in conversations, Gorbachev was compared a number of times with Walter Ulbricht, who had attempted to counter corruption and the immobility of the middle-level bureaucracy by his own personal intervention at a local level. 41. For the most part, these were persons who were not active in politics. 42. In our example, the six full-time party and union functionaries (and similar white-collar workers, such as personnel officers, and editors) were almost all females; these women received far lower salaries than state and technical heads

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and managers in the same plants. None of these functionaries had been a member of a left-wing party prior to the Third Reich or had a parent who had been a member of the KPD or SPD—or had even suffered as a victim of Nazi oppression. By contrast, half of them had at least one member in their close family who had been a member of a Nazi organization, or had been themselves enthusiastic for a time about the Hitler Youth or BDM. However, according to their own statements, none of these functionaries had ever been a member of the NSDAP.

GLOSSARY OF SELECTED TERMS AND ABBREVIATIONS

ADGB — Allgemeiner Deutscher Gewerkschaftsbund (General German Federation of Unions), umbrella organization of “free trade unions” 1919–33. Alltag — Everyday life. Alltagsgeschichte — History/historiography of everyday life. Annäherung — In the sense of “coming nearer to, approximating,” a central hermeneutical term in the methodological stance of alltagsgeschichte’s methodology and practice of representation focused on personal and quotidian historical contexts, entailing the effort to demarcate and reconstruct distance in understanding and representing the Otherness of popular culture and the experiences of social actors from an “inner perspective.” Arbeiterbataillone — Workers’ batallions, voluntary armed units active in the Ruhr in 1919–20 and in Hamburg and Saxony in 1921. The activists in 1919–20 focused primarily on demands for self-regulation and were motivated by calls for the “socialization” of large industry. In 1921, the struggle was KPD-inspired and doomed to failure. BDM — Bund Deutscher Mädel (German Girls’ League), compulsory organization affiliated with HJ (q.v.) for all young women aged 14–18. CDU — Christlich-Demokratische Union Deutschlands (Christian Democratic Union), Christian Democratic bloc party in the GDR under the tutelage of the SED; officially abbreviated CDUD. CPSU — Communist Party of the Soviet Union. DAF — Deutsche Arbeitsfront (German Labor Front), National Socialist party–affiliated organization; set up in 1933, it replaced all previous unions; compulsory membership for all German workers and managers. DFD — Demokratischer Frauenbund Deutschlands (Democratic Women’s League), mass women’s organization in the GDR. DMV — Deutscher Metallarbeiterverein (German Metalworkers’ Association). Eigensinn — Key term in Lüdtke’s analysis of workers’ everyday life, denoting willfulness, spontaneous self-will, a kind of self-affirmation, an act of (re)appropriating alienated social relations on and off the shop floor by self-assertive prankishness, demarcating a space of one’s own. There is a disjunction between formalized politics and the prankish,

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stylized, misanthropic distancing from all constraints or incentives present in the everyday politics of Eigen-Sinn. In standard parlance, the word has pejorative overtones, referring to “obstreperous, obstinate” behavior, usually of children. The “discompounding” of writing it as Eigen-Sinn stresses its root signification of “one’s own sense, own meaning.” It is semantically linked to aneignen (appropriate, reappropriate, reclaim). Einsatzgruppen — SS Special Action Groups involved in the extermination of Jews, Gypsies, and Soviet political commissars. GHH — Gutehoffnungshütte (Goodhope Mill), large steel mill and machine manufacturing complex located in Oberhausen (Ruhr). habitus — A key concept in Pierre Bourdieu’s “theory of practical action.” Defined as “systems of permanent dispositions,” it is a “habit of mind” which facilitates mastering the routine acts of everyday life as something self-evident. Yet at the same time, habitus generates the necessary “strategies which make it possible to confront unanticipated and constantly novel situations.” It is conceptualized as a “system of organic or mental dispositions and unconscious schemata of action, perception and thought.” These schematic patterns have crystallized in the course of history and been acquired by the individual as a part of his own history. A term drawn originally from medicine and biology, it should not be confused with “habit.” Hitlerjugend — Hitler Youth (HJ), Nazi youth organization, declared in 1936 the “state youth organization.” It consisted of the Deutsches Jugendvolk (boys, aged 10–14), Deutsche Jungmädel (girls, 10–14), BDM (q.v.), and Hitlerjugend (men, 14–18). HJ — See Hitlerjugend. KAB — Katholische Arbeiterbewegung (Catholic Workers’ Movement). KdF — Kraft durch Freude (Strength through Joy), the DAF-affiliated leisure organization providing immensely popular recreational programs and facilities for the working population. KPD — Kommunistische Partei Deutschlands (German Communist Party), founded 1919. LDPD — Liberal-demokratische Partei Deutschlands (Liberal Democratic Party), Liberal bloc party in the GDR. Lebensweise — Mode of life, a key term in the historiography of everyday life. In Marxist social analysis, Lebensweise is used to denote the complex of specific living conditions, habits and traditions, behavioral patterns, and thought forms of a particular group or class, and is closely associated with “mode of production.” In German scholarship, its use more generally as a technical term is influenced by its Marxist provenance (cf. Marx/Engels, Die deutsche Ideologie). It has also been rendered here as “way of life.” NSBO — Nationalsozialistische Betriebszellen-Organisation (National

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Socialist Organization of Factory Cells), a Nazi organization for organizing industrial workers. NSDAP — Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei (National Socialist German Workers’ Party), official name of the Nazi party. PCF — Parti communiste française (French Communist Party). Reichsdeutsche — “Aryan” Germans living within the borders of the German Reich, a Nazi racist-ideological term. Resistenz — Resistivity or immunity, a term from biology and medicine, denoting the ability of an organism to resist external influences. Introduced by M. Broszat to characterize a morally neutral attitude of persevering indifference to social and political changes during the Nazi period in contrast with Widerstand, resistance. Its use by historians remains a matter of controversy. RGO — Rote Gewerkschafts-Opposition (Red Trade Union Opposition), shop-floor movement affiliated with the KPD in the late Weimar period. SA — Sturmabteilung (Storm Division), “storm trooper” paramilitary arm of the NSDAP. SD — Sicherheitsdienst (Security Service), intelligence unit of the SS. SED — Sozialistische Einheitspartei Deutschlands (Socialist Unity Party), ruling party in the GDR, formed in 1946 from the merger of the KPD and SPD. SOPADE — SPD in exile; it issued regular, extensive reports on the situation in Nazi Germany (Deutschlandberichte der SOPADE, 1934–40). SPD — Sozialdemokratische Partei Deutschlands (Social Democratic Party), founded 1869. SS — Schutzstaffel (Defense Unit). An elite Nazi Party guard. Transformed under Himmler into a “state within a state,” it controlled all concentration camps, the Gestapo, and a military wing, the Waffen SS. USPD — Unabhhängige Sozialdemokratische Partei Deutschlands (Independent Social Democratic Party), a left-wing splinter group that broke off from the SPD in 1917, rejoining it in 1922. VEB — Volkseigener Betrieb, state-owned enterprise in the GDR. Verstehen — Understanding, a key concept in historical hermeneutics originally developed by W. Dilthey. volkseigen — Belonging to the people, that is, state-owned, a standard term in the GDR. Volksgenosse — Member of the German folk, a Nazi racial term for “citizen.” Volkskunde — Folklore and folklife studies, a traditional ethnographically oriented discipline that has also come to encompass empirical studies in popular culture. Zentrum — Center, a middle-of-the-road Catholic political party, 1870– 1993, well represented in the Reichstag during the Weimar Republic.

CONTRIBUTORS

Harald Dehne, born 1949, Assistant Professor at the Institut für Geschichtswissenschaft, Humboldt-Universität, Berlin. His interests are the theoretical presuppositions underlying (a) the development of research on the proletariat by European ethnologists (Volkskunde) and (b) the historiography of everyday life in the GDR; studies in history and cultural theory dealing with the mode of life of workers in urban areas; empirical work on the diet of Berlin workers during the Wilhelminian period. Wolfgang Kaschuba, born 1950, Professor for European Ethnology, HumboldtUniversität, Berlin. He has published especially on the social history and mentality of the nineteenth century (in particular on popular everyday village culture, protest among the lower classes, early everyday culture and the genesis of bourgeois lifestyles) and on questions pertaining to cultural processes of transformation between the past and present: popular culture, mass culture, class cultures. Alf Lüdtke, born 1943, Research Associate at the Max Planck Institute for History in Göttingen; Visiting Fellow at the Davis Center, Princeton University, 1981–82, The Hebrew University, Jerusalem, 1992, and the University of Chicago, 1993–94. Publications on bureaucratization, in particular state violence and the Prussian police in the nineteenth century; research on workers’ experience and labor policies 1860–1945/1980s, especially industrial work processes, wage structures, the “image” of work and workers. Interested in theoretical issues of historical analyses and in the development of new forms for presenting history and historiography, both within and beyond the guild. Hans Medick, born 1939, Research Associate at the Max Planck Institute for History in Göttingen; Visiting Professor at John Hopkins University, Baltimore, 1981–82. Publications on the early history of the social sciences. Project on the history of rural home industry in Europe (so-called protoindustrialization) from the seventeenth to nineteenth centuries. Within its framework, he is investigating work and everyday life in the artisan-peasant village society of the Schwäbische Alb, southwestern Germany. Studies on the social history of the family and the potentials of anthropological perspectives on historical processes. Lutz Niethammer, born 1939, Professor of Modern and Contemporary History at the Friedrich-Schiller-Universität, Jena; Fellow at St. Antony’s College, Oxford (1972), Maison des Sciences de l’Homme, Paris (1978), Academy of Sciences of the GDR, Berlin (East) (1987), and Wissenschaftskolleg, Berlin (West) (1988). Publications on denazification and other consequences of the Third Reich, the contemporary labor movement, working-class housing and city planning in the nineteenth century, the experience of industrial districts in the Ruhr area and in East Germany in the midtwentieth century, oral history, and “posthistoire.”

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CONTRIBUTORS

Peter Schöttler, born 1950, Research Associate at the CNRS, Paris; Research Fellow at the Maison des Sciences de l’Homme, Paris, 1988–89; member of the Institute for Advanced Study, Princeton, 1990–91. His publications include studies on French and European syndicalism, small trade in Bremen before 1914, and court cases dealing with labor disputes in localities along the Rhine River in the period 1815–48 and during the 1848–49 revolution. He has a special interest in methodological questions (especially the history of mentalities, discourse analysis, history in the cinema); currently he is working on a comparative history of modern historiography in France and Germany. Dorothee Wierling, born 1950, Visiting DAAD-Professor at the Henry M. Jackson School of International Studies at the University of Washington, Seattle. Research areas: social history of female domestic servants; bourgeois women around 1900; mentality and everyday life in the GDR; social history of the commercial lower middle class.

PRINCETON STUDIES IN CULTURE/POWER/HISTORY

High Religion: A Cultural and Political History of Sherpa Buddhism by Sherry B. Ortner A Place in History: Social and Monumental Time in a Cretan Town by Michael Herzfeld The Textual Condition by Jerome J. McGann Regulating the Social: The Welfare State and Local Politics in Imperial Germany by George Steinmetz Hanging without a Rope: Narrative Experience in Colonial and Postcolonial Karoland by Mary Margaret Steedly Modern Greek Lessons: A Primer in Historical Constructivism by James Faubion The Nation and Its Fragments: Colonial and Postcolonial Histories by Partha Chatterjee Culture/Power/History: A Reader in Contemporary Social Theory edited by Nicholas B. Dirks, Geoff Eley, and Sherry B. Ortner After Colonialism: Imperial Histories and Postcolonial Displacements edited by Gyan Prakash Encountering Development: The Making and Unmaking of the Third World by Arturo Escobar Social Bodies: Science, Reproduction, and Italian Modernity by David G. Horn Revisioning History: Film and the Construction of a New Past edited by Robert A. Rosenstone The History of Everyday Life: Reconstructing Historical Experiences and Ways of Life edited by Alf Lüdtke